Melbourne Art Fair: The Last Supper & The Big Breakfast

Johnathon World Peace Bush

17 Feb - 3 Mar 2022

Melbourne Art Fair 2022

Indigenous Art Centre Program

Jilamara Arts & Crafts Association

Johnathon World Peace Bush ‘The Last Supper & The Big Breakfast’

“For both my Tiwi people and my global family I want culture to be strong. Without culture, we are all lost. I hold the Western and Aboriginal law in my hands, I have to balance both laws. You need to fight to keep culture alive. To fix up a family tree you have to go down to the roots and into the past. I work for a bright future where everything will be alright.”

Johnathon World Peace Bush expresses his views on equality, culture, art, and language through painting, writing, song, and dance.

Bush’s ochre paintings present a unique combination of Tiwi culture and his personal views on global politics, family, and cultural heritage. He adopts some painting techniques that reflect jilamara (Tiwi body paint design) and combines them with representations of political figureheads, Catholic imagery that relates to the colonial experience of the Tiwi – stories of colonial crimes against Indigenous people, and adaptations of old anthropological images made of the Tiwi.

See the full exhibition catalogue here