Small
At first glance, Small appears to be an ornamental art-deco accessory. On closer inspection we see two different drawings of the actress Marilyn Monroe. This miniature, freestanding work is drawn from rare footage of an exposed and vulnerable Monroe caught off-guard outside a movie theatre and fleeing from the press. The still is from the same reel as the image of the actress included in Fowler’s Knockers series. Here, the work’s diminutive scale acts as material translation of the actress’s momentary fragility and weakness. In one drawing, Monroe is captured cowering against a wall. In the reverse image, she attempts to pull her clothing across her face to avoid the camera flashes, whose severity bleaches out her features. In these moments, the tables of fame are suddenly and viciously turned: the same press attention that Monroe courted and cultivated are seen to reduce her to the state of a cowering victim. Presenting this harrowing image within a glittering ornate frame, Fowler again references the public’s seemingly insatiable need for spectacle at the cost of genuine timidity and fear.

Small II
Nominated for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2015, Small II is a double-sided drawing conceived as a freestanding sculpture and understood in the round. Like its partner Small, the work comprises two drawings displayed back-to-back. Both sides depict the actress Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane on the night she stabbed and killed Johnny Stompanato, her mother’s lover. This sensational turn of events saw Crane subjected to overwhelming media attention.

Fowler has chosen two separate images from the night of Crane’s arrest, as she is being questioned in a Los Angeles police station. In one, the young girl is depicted in startling innocence, swamped by the unforgiving glare of flashbulbs and surrounded by policemen. In the other, we’re presented with an apparently intimate representation of the back of Crane’s head as she is rushed past photographers. A sense of intimacy is created and frustrated by the conjunction of the two images, capturing the invasiveness of the inescapable media glare. In Small II, as in Small, Fowler’s subjects emerge as prey to the predatory press pack. As the viewer circles around the work, orbiting its star, they are forced to contemplate these moments as distillations of the thirsty consumption of screen idols. The frame is covered in carborundum — typically used for abrasive semi-industrial purposes — becoming a metaphor for the tremulous frailty of beauty placed under the spotlight.