Harriet Bowman: SLOW PUNCTURE

7 Mar-25 Apr 2026

Overview

Cross Lane Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Harriet Bowman (b.1990, N. Devon), winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2024/25.

Did you know that only the female mosquitoes bite? They puncture the skin using a special mouth part called a proboscis that acts as a tube to suck blood through…

Harriet Bowman’s practice is multi-faceted, making sculpture through an intensive process of learning, testing and experimentation. She examines the vulnerability of the body in relation to materials and the bodies of others within the processes of production.

‘Slow Puncture’ presents a new series of sculptures developed as the 22nd winner of the leading UK Award for emerging sculptors. In this new work, Bowman explores language, industry and secondary use of materials through a range of media, including glass, metal, rubber and ceramics.
Her process investigates materials and by spending time in places of industry Bowman embeds herself to better understand their behaviours and transmutations. An intimate understanding of her materials’ cycles focuses our attention on events taking place below the surface.

Bowman has been looking closely at tyre production, investigating what happens next, where the material goes, and finding they become playground surfaces to absorb falls or when shipped overseas become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, who lay their eggs in the stagnant water collected within the doughnuts.

Glass, including smashed car windows, is a primary material explored in the work, with the artist investigating its fluidity when hot and ability to shatter when hit. The origins of the event providing the repurposed material are central – a fist through a passenger door window creating an opportunity to gather fallen glass from the roadside to be fired. At the same time Bowman draws in the glass by burning horsehair between fused panels. Bowman’s interactions are evidenced in traces and lines around which the glass swells and stretches thin, almost to breaking point.

References to the fallibility of the body in relation to the vehicle are abundant in the work. Blown glass headrests undergo a different kind of impact by the artist, punched by the heat of the kiln forcing a secondary collapse. Welded metal stands form a language of holding, presenting and protecting for the audience to peer into the slumped underbelly of tyre depressions.

Bowman brings her shadow collaborators to the fore, those around us carrying out unseen and unlikely practices of production, work and care. She uses this term to describe the various people, animals and machines that she works with and learns from. These include people who vacuum clean glass from cars after break-ins, shred tyres once they are worn, people who lift tyres into mangles or haul hides across tanning room floors for car seats, and others that remove a car windscreen after a piece of tarmac has flicked up and shattered it.

Layers are built by watching closely, gathering evidence and investigating materials. In so doing, Bowman has created a body of work that swells and spills at the sides.

Bowman, who lives and works in Bristol, is the 22nd winner of the MTSA, the most significant award for emerging UK artists working in the field of sculpture. It seeks to reward outstanding and innovative practice, with a particular interest in work that demonstrates a commitment to process, or sensitivity to material. Bowman was selected from 300 entries by a judging panel comprising: Alice Channer; Gemma Brace, Head of Exhibitions, Arnolfini; Rebecca Scott, Director, Cross Lane Projects and Mark Tanner Trust; and Steph Huang, MTSA winner 2023/24.

‘Slow Puncture’ tours the UK as part of the MTSA’s National Touring Programme beginning at Standpoint Gallery, London, in May 2025 and continuing on to The Art House, Wakefield, West Yorkshire in Summer 2026.

Standpoint has commissioned a new essay by writer Emily LaBarge to accompany the exhibition.

About the artist

Harriet Bowman is a multidisciplinary artist born in North Devon and currently living and working in Bristol with a studio at Spike Island. Recent solo exhibitions include: Solo Exhibitions ‘Taking Care of the Yolk’, MIRROR Plymouth, Plymouth, 2024; ‘Maybe they had an urgent call’ (touring) Exeter Phoenix, Exeter, 2023; ‘Maybe they had an urgent call‘ (touring) Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne, 2022; All Round-er (sad sale), Spike Island Gallery, Spike Island, Bristol 2019; putting my foot down, Outpost, Gildengate House, Norwich, 2018.

Recent awards and residencies include: The Cornwall Workshop, Residency led by Mike Nelson at CAST & Kestle Barton, 2024; Awarded the South West Showcase, 2023/24; Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award, 2023 AXIS Fellowship Award, 2023-24; Creative Associate in the glass department at the Arts University Plymouth, 2023-ongoing; Recipient of WEVAA bursary, 2023, a Lecturer on the UWE BA Fine Art & Art and Writing course and a trustee for Spike Island.