Johnathon World Peace Bush: Frieze No.9 Cork Street
27 Feb - 16 Mar 2025
THIS IS NO FANTASY is thrilled to present Walking Between Two Worlds, a series of paintings by First Nations Australian artist Johnathon World Peace Bush for Frieze No.9 Cork Street.
Painted in natural pigments in the three colours of Tiwi land (white, yellow, red) Bush’s works reimagine anthropological images of Tiwi people and Colonial figureheads, often immortalised in statues, each covered in ceremonial ornaments and body paint design. Applying Western imagery alongside a Tiwi visual language that predates the Renaissance, Bush’s work reflects on the complexities of history and heritage.
The power of statues derives from the fact they are representations of real people. They stand for racial purity, wealth, and power, often affirming the victory of the colonial narrative. Western landscapes are dotted with “public sculptures” yet they are not of the people. Instead, they become relics of the past, and in time become meaningless objects. Bush does not topple his statues – he uses a conceptual framework to manifest his unique and revolutionary approach, collapsing Tiwi markings for the body with ethnographic and art historical imagery in a single composition. In doing so he unravels the dark underbelly of history.
9 Cork St, London W1S 3LL, United Kingdom