Fred Fowler (born 1980) is an Australian-born visual artist, specialising in painting, drawing and printmaking. He currently lives in Paris, France.
Contents |
Fred was born in 1980 in Canberra, Australia. In 1986, Fred moved to Melbourne with his family.
Fred displayed an interest in art and a proficiency for it from a young age. His interest was fostered by his parents, who are both architects, and his father taught him how to draw.
Fred was inspired by the graffiti he saw around him in Melbourne. At age 11, Fred started experimenting with tagging in his local neighbourhood. At 15, Fred began creating throw-ups and pieces under various aliases, and at 16, Fred was given the name NUROCK by his graffiti mentor, DUET. It was from this point on, with the name NUROCK, that Fred began to paint regularly. Fred painted on train lines and public walls and also on trains, buses and trams. Fred gained notoriety painting as NUROCK both with his peers and with the general public: "In this sub-culture, Nurock is a bit of a legend. His large street pieces are quite extraordinary - intricate yet confronting, and definitely artistic."[1]
In 1998 Fred began creating stencils. Through cutting stencils, Fred found a new way to experiment with spray paint. He was looking for ways to achieve a different aesthetic to his graffiti work.
In 2001, at age 21, Fred held his first solo exhibition Raiders of the Lost Art at A.R.T. Gallery Eden in Melbourne. His exhibition included stencils, paintings and rock carvings. According to the new McCulloch Encyclopedia of Australian Art, this exhibition was "one of the first private gallery exhibitions in Melbourne by a graffiti artist."[2]
Raiders of the Lost Art was the subject of a lengthy Age article[2] in June 2001. The front page article was titled "The Street Artist Who Came in from the Cold".[1] The article discussed Fred's artwork, both on the street and in the gallery, and also discussed the graffiti movement more widely. The journalist, Jane Faulkner, drew parallels between Fred's work and that of other artists before him like Henri Matisse and Jackson Pollock. She commented that "what unites these artists is experimentation: a word that has become synonymous with 20th century art."[3]
In 2008, Fred held his solo exhibition Highland Chamber at Until Never gallery in Hosier Lane. His exhibition was reviewed by The Age newspaper[4] and his set of five silkscreen prints were praised by reviewer Ross Moore as "a suite of fastidiously elegant black and white ink drawings."[5]
During July and August 2010, Fred completed an eight week Eurotrash European mural painting tour. He stopped in ten European cities: Paris, Lyon, San Sebastian, Madrid, Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam.
Fred is involved in the exhibition Space Invaders held at the National Gallery of Australia. The exhibition opened on 30 October 2010 and will tour to Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales in 2011.[6]
Fred's involvement in the exhibition was the subject of an article[7] in The Canberra Times newspaper.
Fred is now based in Paris and works from his studio in the Bastille.