I Throughout his acting career, Elvis was kept under strict control by his manager Colonel Tom Parker. The impresario had an unshakeable vision of how Elvis should be marketed as a screen actor, stripping him of the Rock and roll charisma and sex appeal that originally propelled him to stardom. In this small work, Fowler began by taking a still from one of Elvis’s films, and extricating it from its original context. She presents him almost unrecognisably, adopting an expression akin to a moment of religious rapture. The image is stark contrast to Colonel Parker’s desire for a plasticised, wholesome star.

El: Part I stages the artist’s own rebellion against this period of Elvis’s career. By seeking out an image at odds with the conventionalised, heavily-parodied version of Elvis assumed in his screen appearances, Fowler turns Parker’s own desires inside out. She liberates his ‘real’ character from its ‘phony’ expression, and “brings Elvis back to his rock and roll roots”. The piece includes one of Fowler’s hand-sculpted frames, composed of nude, blindfolded and bound figures of women. In this context, the frame becomes emblematic of the duress that Elvis fans symptomatically imposed upon themselves, reflecting back, in its turn, on the oppressive constraints involved in the cultivation of stardom.