‘People could see it from the train’: Frank Bauer’s life of light and colour
Two new exhibitions celebrate the playful but meticulously crafted work of German-born, Goodwood-based artist Frank Bauer.
Frank Bauer has made everything from jewellery to kettles over his multi-faceted career, but it is his striking sculptures of light and metal that are being showcased this winter at Samstag Museum of Art.
Lining a wall of the Samstag’s downstairs gallery are colourful works from Bauer’s Lichtbilder (light picture) series that channel light through a 3D stainless-steel grid structure, while a towering, 4.5-metre-wide stainless-steel sculpture topped with a Ukrainian flag and draped with Tibetan prayer flags dominates the centre of the space.
“He’s been building that in his garden [at Goodwood] for a couple of years — people could see it from the train line,” curator Gillian Brown says of the structure, which incorporates LED lighting strips in red, blue, green and yellow.
It is meticulously crafted yet also playful, which seems to be a common feature across Adelaide-based Bauer’s more than 45-year practice as an artist, jeweller, designer and metalsmith.
“Frank’s work in lighting really began in earnest here in Adelaide in the late 1980s… and he has continued to push the way he makes these works even now,” Brown says.
“Focusing on this aspect of his work seemed a perfect way to highlight some of the constants across his varied output — his commitment to sustainability, and the balance between order and creativity that he manages to capture in each piece. The structure of the grid is essential to that.”
Now aged in his 80s, Bauer grew up in Hanover, Germany, surrounded by artists and architects. His father was one of the last Bauhaus-trained architects, and Europe’s avant-garde creatives had a strong influence on his son.
“I started initially with jewellery because my father was friends with a jeweller, but he was not only a jeweller, he was a silversmith and a blacksmith — and metal is one of my fascinations,” Bauer tells InReview, explaining that he was captivated by seeing how metal could be shaped, coloured and polished.
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“It was this physical thing — for me, I think I absorb things more through my skin than my brain. I always like, in my work, three dimensionality.”
After doing a silversmithing apprenticeship, young Frank continued to hone his skills in Europe and also studied industrial design and architecture, before falling in love with an Australian woman he met in Ireland and moving to Sydney in 1971, then a few years later to Adelaide.
"It was this physical thing — for me, I think I absorb things more through my skin than my brain."
Bauer’s ultra-contemporary jewellery included pendants in silver and gold that incorporated geometric shapes, and rings with moveable parts. He laughs while recounting how someone described one piece he created as masochistic.
“In my first exhibition at JamFactory, I had some work which was a bit sardonic. It was actually one ring — I think almost subconsciously I made it, because I was in the pain of losing this woman and it was a ring I could screw onto my hand until the finger gets red.”
Bauer’s works — including a series of silver kettles and teapots and coffee pots — have been acquired by galleries and museums around the world, among them London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Australia, Berlin’s Bauhaus Archive and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
In a 2022 article marking Bauer’s 80th birthday, AGSA curator of decorative arts and design Rebecca Evans said he had helped shape this country’s art and craft landscape through his exhibiting and work as a jewellery and metalsmithing teacher, noting that he had grown up “immersed in the core idea of the Bauhaus school, that there should be no distinction between form and function”.
Bauer himself says he has been “lucky” to have supportive patrons over the years. These include Australian architect Karl Fender (co-founder of the firm which designed the Eureka Tower at Melbourne’s Southbank), who has commissioned a number of his large-scale lighting pieces and agreed to open the Samstag exhibition.
"I feel very upset and very, very angry about politicians who can’t learn anything from history — including Putin."
After researching lighting design in the late 1980s, Bauer secured a patent for the low-voltage grid-lighting system he uses in his work. His multi-layered “light paintings”, a selection of which can also be seen in a display at BMGART running concurrently with the Samstag exhibition, incorporate anodised aluminium panels in different shapes.
The large-scale wind-driven kinetic sculptures are the most recent addition to Bauer’s practice. When asked why he added the Ukrainian flag to the one at Samstag, his explanation reveals how growing up in the shadow of Germany’s fascist regime left an indelible mark.
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“I feel very upset and very, very angry about politicians who can’t learn anything from history — including Putin,” he says.
“I don’t feel particularly German. I can be very proud of Bach and Beethoven, but I feel ashamed that Germany produced also one of the nastiest people ever, in Adolf.”
Asked what he thinks makes good design, Bauer cites the 10 principals of industrial designer Dieter Rams, which state, among other things, that good design must be innovative, honest, long-lasting, and make a product both useful and understandable.
“We always think with design the look has to be good, and I agree it has to look good, but it also has to be clear, giving a message of what it is about,” says Bauer.
He long ago rejected the concept of “planned obsolescence” in commercial design, stating: “It has to be the best, lasting material… not throwaway.”
Brown says Bauer has a distinctive way of thinking and practising that can be seen across all of his work — including his jewellery, silver-smithing and lighting — and has held true to his instincts throughout his career.
“I think he makes things in a deeply considered way, with precision and a clear vision, and that drive comes entirely from within.
"I think he makes things in a deeply considered way, with precision and a clear vision, and that drive comes entirely from within."
“He won’t march to anyone else’s beat; he makes things that match his own, very high, standards and then we (as viewers) can rise to meet them.”
Walking around the Samstag gallery ahead of his exhibition opening, Bauer adjusts a couple of the works and points out a metal table he says he originally designed for Fender. Sitting atop it are two lamps which, when illuminated, will demonstrate colour theory through red, blue and green lights playing against a wall.
He appreciates seeing the effort and commitment that has gone into a work, and perhaps this is what drives him to continue innovating and creating. Or maybe it’s the 12 cups of coffee he admits to drinking each day.
“At the moment I just sneak into the workshop at 11 o’clock at night and work for one hour, two hours — I’m just waking up at that time,” he says
Bauer says he also enjoys having his work acknowledged by others.
“I heard this artist on the radio a long time ago, he was a quite successful British artist, and the interviewer asked, ‘What do you think? Are you a good artist?’. ‘I’m not so sure’, he said, ‘but people buy my work’.”
The Frank Bauer exhibition is showing at Samstag Museum of Art from June 20 until September 26 as part of the museum’s Kudlila (winter) season program. BMGART’s exhibition of Bauer’s work continues until July 7.