Saatchi Online Artist: Mick Aslin; Photograph, 1981, Mixed Media “Mr Bow”.

Mr Bow –working title. Digital photo print from a photographic original originally shown at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool in 1981 and reproduced on the cover of the gallery magazine in February of that year. Mr Bow is the first in a sequence of images created for the MANBOX series of installation and performance events, which have been reused, collaged, used in animation and multi media productions. Here it is seen in splendid isolation, with the video lamp, which was used to light the scene clearly visible. The lighting is designed to bleach out any recognisable features and creates a high contrast abstract play of light, which develops into repeating patterns in increasingly complex later montages. Crudely hand-painted eyes and mouth have been added to the finished print, lending it a slightly comic look. The image becomes a strangely unsettling introduction to the images, which follow.

Michael Aslin.