The World of the Surface continues Bawden's fascination with oblique approaches to articulating aspects of the human condition. His sculptural works harness landscape as a stand-in for the body and locate one's inner-world within a mythical and geographic underworld, suggesting interconnected realms of discovery and dark psychological states. This series of works further explore the void and points of entry and disappearance to interior realms where forms take shape over millennia.

Bawden's core practice exploits hexagonal colored pencils as a sculptural material, reconfigured and carved into amorphous shapes, mining the material's rich qualities of color, geometry and metaphor. Bawden explores themes of flux, transformation and repetition as preconditions to our experience of the physical world, essential to the construction of identity.

Lionel Bawden is an Australian artist working in sculpture, performance, drawing, installation and painting. He is a graduate of The Australian National University, School of Art 1997 and has been awarded residencies internationally including The Creative New Zealand Artist in residence program at Dunedin Art Gallery, New Zealand 2003 and Art OMI residency, Omi International Arts Centre, Columbia County, New York State, USA, 2009. Bawden was the winner of the prestigious Wynne Prize 2009 at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Since 2010, Bawden has been Co-Director of Firstdraft Gallery in Sydney, Australia.