Carl Rowe

Carl Rowe studied Fine Art at Manchester Polytechnic, graduating with an MA in 1985. He currently lives in Norwich where he is an Associate Professor in Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts. He is an artist member and studio holder at OUTPOST in Norwich and is also a member of the Printmakers Council. Rowe has an international profile as both an artist and an academic. His work has been exhibited widely in the UK as well as in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Canada, US, Estonia, Japan, Malaysia and Egypt. In addition to studio production he has also worked on public art including billboards, print portfolios and hospital art. In 2018 Rowe was commissioned by Hospital Rooms to make work for Woodlands Mental Health Unit at Ipswich Hospital and is currently engaged in a new project with Hospital Rooms.

My art switches back and forth between an engagement with socio-political issues and subconscious renderings. I can’t escape my concern for the wrongdoing in the world and within my art a surface layer of humour, absurdity and the arcane masks a strong undercurrent of concern for humanity. When I ease off the direct engagement with current affairs, symbols, objects and graphic devices float up from somewhere in my memory and arrange themselves in unlikely compositions.

I work with both paint and print process. The materials that I use are often intrinsically connected with the images they portray such as the work Drool, an installation made with ink containing herbs and spices from the G20 countries and the Serbian paprika used in Deprecated Location, a screen print depicting Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Recent paintings, drawings and prints present an obsession with clay pipe fragments, hazard warnings, cylindrical containers and clouds of particulates.

Carl Rowe CV