Uncertain ceremonies

The Morality Play (2014), by Kushana Bush. COURTESY OF BRETT MCDOWELL GALLERY, DUNEDIN AND DARREN...
The Morality Play (2014), by Kushana Bush. COURTESY OF BRETT MCDOWELL GALLERY, DUNEDIN AND DARREN KNIGHT GALLERY, SYDNEY
Kushana Bush: ''These paintings are very influenced by the miniature method, which is supposed to...
Kushana Bush: ''These paintings are very influenced by the miniature method, which is supposed to make you sit up and see the world afresh.''

 

Fanciful and anachronistic, the work of Dunedin artist Kushana Bush shares traits with that of acclaimed Briton Grayson Perry, writes Shane Gilchrist.

Loaded with references to arts of other times and places, from Indo-Persian miniatures and Japanese prints to illuminated manuscripts and early-Renaissance paintings, Dunedin artist Kushana Bush's intricate works are now sharing gallery space with Turner Prize-winning Grayson Perry.

''Grayson Perry/Kushana Bush'', which opened at City Gallery, Wellington, last weekend and runs until March 20, offers a logical connection between the artists' themes and methodologies, according to the gallery's chief curator, Robert Leonard.

''We had the opportunity to show British artist Grayson Perry's fabulous tapestry, Map of Truths and Beliefs (2011). It looks like a fanciful, allegorical map from medieval times, but has contemporary content.''

Woven on a computerised loom, Perry's tapestry catalogues current pilgrimage destinations, religious and secular, including Mecca, Stonehenge, Auschwitz, Davos and Wembley.

''I wanted to show someone else alongside it, in conversation with it, and thought of Kushana Bush,'' Leonard explains.

Like Perry, Bush depicts modern life in an anachronistic style.

Her work recalls the arts of other places and times - Indo-Persian miniatures, Cambodian wall reliefs, pre-Renaissance painting and Japanese prints.

''Her intricate gouaches are puzzling. They seem jewel-like and easy on the eye, but are loaded with ominous details: suggestions of rituals and violence,'' Leonard says.

''In splicing here and there, then and now, occidental and oriental, and us and them, Bush frustrates our cosmopolitanism or presumption to operate as citizens of the world.

''When I look at her gouaches now, I can't help but think about the current unrest in Syria and the refugee crisis.''

For her part, Bush says the works in the current show were all made in 2014 and represent the first time she gave her figurative paintings skies and architecture to ''stand within''.

''With this new turn, you wonder which culture do these people belong to? What rituals and ceremonies are they performing?''

The 10 works were inspired by the European, Turkish, Persian and Mughal miniatures she saw when she visited the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin last year.

''These exquisite objects had a jewel-like glow that make you feel a kind of divine ecstasy when you look at them. When you walk outside the library after an experience like that, the grass somehow looks sharper, greener and cloud shapes, flowers, and faces all come into focus,'' she reflects.

''These paintings are very influenced by the miniature method, which is supposed to make you sit up and see the world afresh. The art of miniature illumination is a method of painting that, at its best, demonstrates how vivid and mysterious the world is.

''I think the modern world is missing communal activities and rituals a bit. I keep saying that's why the Royal Wedding was such a hit; we are all looking for reasons to come together.

''I give the people in these paintings invented ceremonies to attend. You are not sure if they are attending a holy festival, a school play, a circumcision ceremony or a Santa parade.''

Bush says her latest exhibition works are the start of a larger series that will take three years to complete and will conclude with a major show at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in November 2016.

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