Damien Minton Presents Mark Gowing's Solo Exhibition

Acclaimed artist and typographer Mark Gowing will present his forthcoming exhibition This one is a song at Damien Minton Presents in Surry Hills, Sydney from 15 - 26 July 2025. The new body of work draws on Gowing's lifetime spent in publishing, type and print media"utilising found book covers and pages in place of the canvas as a key element in his practice.

In This one is a song, Gowing's process-driven approach creates bold, geometric artworks that reveal visually discernible musical rhythms and structures of language. Concerned with books as artefacts and containers of language, Gowing's finished works reflect the flow of the written word and seek to highlight the power and depth of language. Driven by his belief that understanding is as much about feeling as it is about clarity, these compositions pose thought-provoking questions about how we interpret visual rhythms and text-based narratives. 

Developed across a career spanning more than 35 years, the visual language systems employed in Gowing's practice are constructed through a simplification and exaggeration of the negative spaces found throughout the alphabet. Using repeated shapes to illustrate the forms within letters, Gowing's texts are abstracted by gridded systems to emphasise rhythms and visual relationships. Gowing's works encourage interpretation through feeling and intuition.

Mark Gowing says, "My new series of works exist between writing and art, feeling and form. Using fragments of personal writings and inner dialogues, these works have taken shape through a process of abstraction and reflection. Each work explores the limits of language and what occurs when words are not only seen or read, but visualised. Each work presents unspoken feelings that allude to our human futility, while also speaking to the content within the media they are painted on; the work I will die for you my love but I will die anyway relates to both the native plant life printed on the vintage book pages, as much as it relates to my own mortality." 

Sourced from secondhand and antiquarian booksellers"and occasionally from his own library"the selected publications which comprise the physical foundations of Gowing's new series range in topic from language to art and nature. These include The Flowering of the Pacific, Brian Adams (1986); A Concise History of Modern Painting, Herbert Read (1959); The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, Third Edition, William George Smith (1970) and Shrubs and Trees for Australian Gardens, Ernest E. Lord (1964).

Gowing is the founder and director of The Letters, a type company that specialises in the development of expressive fonts. He has created custom typefaces for creative institutions such as Artspace and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, as well as for artist publications including Jonathan Jones: works on Paper 2010–19 and Gemma Smith: Found Ground. He was also a founder of landmark arts publisher Formist Editions (2013-2024), producing significant publications such as Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 40 Years and Angelica Mesiti: Assembly. 

Bringing a wealth of design, publishing, and industry knowledge to his personal practice, Gowing has produced creative projects for leading organisations and institutions, including Kaldor Public Art Projects, and has served as exhibition director of the Australian Poster Biennale (2011, 2013). Alongside this, Gowing has presented several solo exhibitions including for the 22nd International Poster Biennale in Warsaw, Poland; the Divieto d'Affissione in Turin, Italy; and Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His works are held in numerous institutional collections including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, USA, and have been featured in group exhibitions across Australia. These include presentations at Campbelltown Arts Centre as a finalist in the Fisher's Ghost Art Award 2024, Saint Cloche Gallery, Australian Design Centre, Art Gallery of Ballarat, UTS Gallery, and internationally at the Bodoni Museum of Parma, Italy; Walter Knoll Centre, London; and Seoul Arts Center, South Korea.