This joyous exhibition reveals recent works by Sir Frank Bowling OBE RA RWA (Hon)

Bowling is an honorary Academician of the RWA and has a longstanding relationship with the Academy dating from the 1980s, when his early solo exhibition ‘Bowling through the Decade’ was presented at the RWA.  

Centre stage is Intotheblue (2026) Frank Bowling’s largest ever work. At 13 metres wide, the painting encapsulates the ambition and originality of Bowling’s current practice and was inspired by his destroyed work The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots (1963).  

Previously on view for one day only the exhibition gives audiences the rare opportunity to see the work.  

Other works including Circle in Green (2025) and Barbados (2022) capture an extraordinary period defined not by slowing down, but by expansion. The exhibition offers an illuminating insight into the work of an artist still making at scale in his later years, and his living practice: bold, experimental and still unfolding. 

Bowling’s seven-decade career has been driven by his passion for paint and by the physical and sensory effects of working with colour.  Now aged 92, Frank Bowling still works from his studio, directing the flow of paint, colour and composition with undiminished clarity and imagination. Supported by a close-knit team, he continues to produce ambitious new work – not as a reflection on the past, but as a live and evolving practice.   

For audiences, this will be a rare and moving experience:  a chance to encounter paintings that carry both the weight of a lifetime and the energy of a practice that refuses to settle.

Gallery Admission

General admission: £11 including an optional £1 donation
Concession* admission: £6 including an optional £1 donation 
Student admission: £2 including an optional £1 donation 

RWA Members and Art Pass Card Holders go free.

Presented by the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) and the Frank Bowling Foundation in collaboration with Gilane Tawadros, curator and Director, Whitechapel Gallery.