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Kushana

Bush

Kushana Bush

Kushana Bush’s Biography

Last Updated:
16/05/2019, 2:31 pm
Discipline:
Painter
Awards:
New Generation 2013
Highlight:
Kushana Bush is a Dunedin-based artist whose works show a decorative elegance with a witty, touching focus on social moments.

"Kushana Bush's latest satirical paintings playfully tout the impossible task of satisfying everyone's needs. Their delicate and alluring surfaces conflate disparate cultures, unsettle simplified notions of East and West and cut across cultural difference. Inhabited by a multi-cultural cast of characters, her amusing and imaginative group portraits draw on a range of art styles and epochs from Giotto's fourteenth century frescoes and erotic Japanese Shunga art to Indo-Persian miniatures and the twentieth century paintings of Englishmen Stanley Spencer. Bush's cosmopolitan art brings together constituent elements from all over the world in order to inventively reconfigure the geographical, political and social landscape of our time."
From a Press Release by Natalie Poland (Curator Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand) for Frances Hodgkins Exhibition ‘All Things to All Men'.

Kushana Bush lives and works in Dunedin, New Zealand. In 2009 Kushana won the Art and Australia Contemporary Art Award. In that same year she was Artist in Residence at the National Art studio, Changdong, Seoul (an Arts Centre/Asia NZ Foundation Residency). Kushana was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at The University of Otago in 2011 producing art work for the show ‘All Things to All Men' during her tenure. In 2012 Kushana exhibited at the Melbourne Art Fair (with Brett McDowell Gallery) and at Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland. In 2013 her work was included in shows ‘On this day alone', curated by Glenn Barkley at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; ‘A Different View' at Gus Fisher Gallery, Unviersity of Auckland and she had her first solo exhibition with Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney.

Kushana was the recipient of an Arts Foundation New Generation Award in 2013. New Generation artists are the hot shots, the ones to watch, and the ones that have an X-factor that sets them apart from their peers. They have assured potential. Their work is exciting. They are independent, individual and show outstanding promise. They also display a depth of thinking and consistency that gives their work strength.