Audio Guide Transcript Narrator: Frank Bowling made this painting - Who's Afraid of Barney Newman - in 1968.
The title is an art joke, in response to a painting by the American abstract artist Barnett Newman which he'd called
Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, taking a swipe at the austere, modernist painting of Piet Mondrian.
Frank Bowling: "There are two bits of readable images in this work, one the map of South America and two, mother's house.
At the top of the picture there is the skeleton of the building that was my family's general store.
I had this old photograph of Bowling's Variety Store.
Colour was the intention, but I felt I still needed to hang onto aspects of known phenomena like the house and the man.
I didn't become an artist until I had left Guyana - many, many years in fact, and Guyana meant nothing to me as an artist.
Over and over again people would point out to me that this looked like tropical colour, yet I'm not sure that this was in the forefront
of my brain.
My intention was to be as good as all the colour painters around, including Barnet Newman who at the time, and again I want to emphasise
this is part of the reason for the title, was like some kind of political statement, you know?
I'm here, Barney, you know, everyone was talking about being afraid of Barney.
I took it into my head to not be afraid, I wanted to.. not simply get close to the work, but I suppose compete."
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