Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel

Stephen Bush’s painting Col du Galibier, 2003, assumes an almost talismanic presence in this exhibition. Spare, and somehow singular in the company of a gallery of paintings seemingly brought together because of a consistent yet loose interest in both the expressive and narrative possibilities of landscape that plays out across them, Col du Galibier is at once related to this quest but not of it. The glossy purple, blue and green globules in the work certainly resemble a mountainous mass, but this mass is formed by a rather precarious looking pile of paint that literally bears the physical marks of it being squeezed from the tube. Like the expectant blank screen that faces the twenty-first century author, Bush has captured the precious and anxious moment of beginning, the daunting task of making a start; painting a painting about the act of painting at the moment before the brush is loaded and that first mark is made.

At the heart of Stephen Bush’s practice is the constant, almost nagging question of what it means to be an artist and particularly, what it means to work in the most anachronistic of mediums: paint. Bush’s oeuvre is tantalisingly playful and confounding in its embrace of circularity and repetition, and never ceases to surprise in its creative re-use of an expansive back catalogue of subject matter and motifs. His paintings continue to be made within a variety of self-imposed and at times, performative frameworks—whether it be painting Babar the Elephant from memory in his ongoing The lure of Paris series, 1992–; working monochromatically with a particular colour (sienna red, green, purple); introducing the use of paint as viscous liquid as a way of embracing chance and the accidental and as a means by which to interrupt an over-reliance on figuration; or populating the combination of ‘straight’ landscapes and psychedelic high-keyed vistas that have appeared across the years with the ever-stoic, hard-working presence of the beekeeper. However, the push-pull that reverberates across his work like a refrain is an ongoing fascination with the artist’s desire, or indeed, need to create, and a constant (almost self-deprecating) inquiry into just what this achieves. Through the tasks, tests, or games (it is never quite clear) that Stephen Bush sets himself, the act of painting is re-invigorated and remains a challenge; notions of the original and copy, high and low culture, authenticity and value become part of the conversation, and any sense of ‘progress’ or a clear trajectory informing the artist’s oeuvre is happily thwarted. The questions may be apparent here, but there are never straightforward answers. Indeed, the answers seem to throw up more questions, and we are somehow back at the beginning ... sort of, but not really.

This exhibition, Steenhuffel, is itself an astute embodiment of and response to the challenges and expectations inherent in making ‘new’ work. Commissioned as part of the Potter’s ongoing series of Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Projects designed to encourage artists to take risks and explore new directions in their practice, just what does this opportunity mean when you are Stephen Bush, a painter who will continue to paint? Falling somewhere between a project show and survey exhibition, the Vizard Foundation commission has enabled Bush to not only make new paintings to the brief, but through the creation of Steenhuffel, explore this notion within the context of the exhibition itself. As a result, the artist has pushed the parameters of both the display of his work and the exhibition experience, presenting three distinct but interrelated aspects of his practice across the different gallery spaces that comprise the exhibition: the landscape (with accompanying overlays of the sublime, the taming of nature, or of pioneering endeavour[1]); the use of purple (which speaks, through their absence, of the other hues that have preoccupied him over time), and the recurring motif of the beekeeper. However, these ‘groups’ of works are in no way contained by the walls of the spaces that house them, and continue to remain in dialogue through the (re)appearance of various shared attributes—wonkily constructed log cabins, sweeping alpine vistas, modernist structures, and a cast of animals (often, the goat), to name but a few—that hover incongruously within swirling, apocalyptic landscapes of oil and enamel paint whose pooled surfaces and acidic palette are like the stuff of toxic waste; bringing in turn a new, more insidious inflection to the hooded figure of the beekeeper.

Created over extended periods and returned to and re-worked time and again, these paintings, drawn from across the decades, similarly embody a respect for process and hard work that is ultimately subsumed by both the ‘doing’ and the end result. Many of Bush’s paintings are replete with the ‘stuff’ of making art and of things in progress—landscapes formed from clay squeezed and moulded by the artist’s hands (I have come to the creek and Lampre, both 2003); the introduction of lens flare as otherworldly incursion within these strange environments, and even the appearance of the artist as performer, in a constant state of willing adaptation. Bush’s lingering interest in ‘the journey’ also resonates in his decades-long engagement with the ‘persistent redundancy’ of life on the land[2]—think of the role assumed by the humble tractor in his work of 1980s; the heroic elevation of produce in Corn scene or Rubbing doesn’t help (both 1997); or the recurrence of the twee ‘country idyll’ in works such as Lady Campbell Weed: Hagelsag, 2009 and Lady Campbell Weed: William of Orange, 2011—which is, like painting, built on a core of repetitive labour at once seemingly futile, yet fundamental to the final product. Bush however, knowingly short-circuits these immediate connections through a continuous re-mix of technique, subject matter and approach. The ‘Lady Campbell Weed’ of various titles for example, is another name for Paterson’s Curse, celebrated by apiarists, but the scourge of Australian farming; its resplendent purple flower similarly reflected in the nauseatingly sumptuous palette in which these paintings are made. But where does this lead us? Such correspondences between works wriggle from one’s grasp when almost caught—becoming, as a result, all the more circuitous and difficult to pin down. While the paintings brought together in the ‘purple gallery’ in Steenhuffel showcase a continuation ‘in some conceptual form’ of the Venetian red paintings from 1995 and the later use of green in Bush’s Pomme de terre series, 1998, they also point more tangentially to the fluctuations of fashion and taste throughout European and American history, as well as, on a more prosaic level, those of the art world itself. As Bush expounds:

… Purple has several roles in history. Originally due to its rarity and expense, it was reserved for royalty and held an air of opulence and ceremony. But mixed with this, is how colour (like the work of particular artists) flows in and out of currency with time. Purple had a big hit in the 20s and 30s and then again in the late 60s and early 70s, only to fall into cliché and parody years later. When painting I have come to the creek, several tubes of purple were purchased in the attempt to find the most vibrant possible; with all that purple, it was bound to re-occur in other works years later.

 … Rather than pinpoint any particular source, I will say these works [Lady Campbell Weed: William of Orange, 2011 and Groninger Koek, 2009] come from an interest in fluctuations in European and American history that relate to cultural shifts; more specifically, how artists’ careers ebb and flow with time. Once-successful salon painters in their day can, in the eyes of the art world, almost disappear (some not without reason). A good example is Clement Greenberg naming Jules Olitski the greatest painter of our time. History as it runs out hasn’t revered Olitski in that light, not at this stage anyway.[3]

 As an artist who has lived and continued to paint through the endless ‘deaths’ and revivals of painting decried across the decades, Bush remains ever-conscious of the irony of his own position. On one level, the perilous pick-up-sticks wooden structures, strange heraldic forms, and vast array of log cabins that float within Bush’s paintings are an ode to the unknown maker, raising questions of authorship, taste, value and ‘signature style’ that play against and within his own instantly recognisable images. The artist’s recent body of gouaches, Saunders Cuthbert, 2013–14, for example, both depict and venerate the chook shed. Encompassing a catalogue of different shed styles—from simple wooden enclosures, shrunken replicas of North American farmhouses to streamlined modernist factories—this series presents the viewer with a suite of extraordinary structures whose imaginative design extends far beyond the everyday practicalities and demands of their use. Disconcertingly ‘out of time’—neither of the present or the past—their sepia palette nevertheless evokes a sense of history and of memory (with all its ‘tricks’ of accuracy, re-writing and subsequent fabrication).

This interest in the traditional use of images as recording tools, instruments of learning and as conveyors of information is also apparent in the, it must be said, rather whacky group of works from the University Art Collection that Stephen Bush has included within the exhibition. Described by the artist as a kind of ‘mad uncle art’[4], the selection of objects ranges from prints by celebrated colonial artists such as Nicholas Chevalier, ST Gill and John Gould’s work (one cannot help but imagine that Bush’s selection of Gould was at least partly informed by childhood memories of the ubiquitous Gould League of Victoria’s flora and fauna posters of the 1960s and 70s); watercolours and botanical illustrations by unknown artists; drawings by Melbourne-based architect Lloyd Orton; a pair of carved wooden panels, and a wonderfully naïve and charming series of ink drawings of birds on wooden panels from a grand Victorian house in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Displayed in the same gallery as the artist’s purple paintings, these works together raise often unspoken questions about the politics, hidden stories and idiosyncrasies of institutional collecting, just as their very presence within the exhibition space cannot help but suggest a relationship to Stephen Bush’s own practice (possible areas of influence, confluence and interest?). True to historical form however, this sense of possible connection to Bush’s work remains nothing but a whisper; a cheeky and indeterminate suggestion that oscillates, and ultimately, refuses to settle.

Related issues of authority, authorship and intent similarly ripple around Coppersmith, 2014, the painted wall mural adjacent to the large group of beekeeper works that are displayed en masse in the Potter’s level one gallery. A deliberate translation or schematic of an intricate (and mass produced) paisley design sourced by Bush, the execution of Coppersmith by a group of students from the Victorian College of the Arts’ Painting program informally mirrors the traditional atelier model, in which the artist assumes the position of both mentor and director. While its explosive areas of bold, clashing colour gleefully amplifies the celebratory chorus of Bush’s own work, its presence, along with the collection works displayed in the gallery below, similarly encourages us to ponder the complex web of issues and value judgements that separate the artist from the artisan, and the craft of simply making something well, from art. In the end, this exhibition is, of course, both an acknowledgement and celebration of the ongoing contribution and work of Stephen Bush, painter; but the work itself, with all its twists, turns and dead ends, never allows us to assume this position easily or lightly.

Text © 2014, the author and the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne. Image © Stephen Bush. Reproduced with thanks.

Stephen Bush is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.

Notes

1 With its related notions of ‘ownership’ and, within an Australian context, the ongoing legacy of colonisation.

2 Liza Statton, ‘No consolation prizes’, Stephen Bush: Gelderland (SITE Santa Fe, 2007), 17. Statton also notes a biographical connection here, as Bush grew up on his family’s farm in Pennyroyal, near Colac, in rural Victoria.

3 Email correspondence with the author, 17 February 2014.

4 Stephen Bush in conversation with the author, 23 October 2013.