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Artist-Led
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2021
John Busher, L-R: Untitled, 2018-2020; Walking in the Park, 2017; Celebration (After Party), 2017; Carriage, 2019, installation view, Wilton Castle; photograph by Frank Abruzzese, courtesy of the artist
LAST SPRING, MANY artists were restricted to their homes. As we
Painting Solitude JOHN BUSHER DISCUSSES ‘SIFT’, AN ARTIST-LED GROUP EXHIBITION IN WILTON CASTLE IN WEXFORD.
entered into another lockdown over the winter months, our worlds again contracted to a 5 km perimeter. Almost akin to working small, we accepted how one might take advantage of the restrictions imposed on us. Some artists resigned to an inability to make work; others set up makeshift studios and laboured feverishly. Many shows were cancelled or postponed. The instability of not knowing meant that notions of DIY culture were being redefined in the digital realm. Early morning walks have always been an intrinsic part of my practice. Familiar sights, such as ruined mills and abandoned rail tracks, form the topography of the River Boro – a tributary of the River Slaney, which rises in the dense moss overlooked by the Blackstairs Mountain. Big stately houses, such as Coolbawn House, Castleboro House and Macmine Castle, now lie ivy-clad against the riverbank. Among these once-thriving estates is Wilton Castle, reduced to ruins during the Irish Civil War in 1923 and now partially restored by a devoted farmer, Seán Windsor, over the last 17 years. With access to cultural institutions hindered once more, Wilton Castle opened up the possibility of an exhibition venue within my 5 km border in north Wexford. The castle’s remote location seemed to chime somewhat with the solitary life of a painter (this solitude is what attracted me to the medium in the first instance). Daniel Robertson designed the castle around an existing country house, the scorched metal hanging rail still visible on the bare stone walls of the drawing room. It’s tempting to reimagine what a contemporary collection might look like today. ‘Sift’ began as a painting project in 2015, in response to the themes of memory and place. I decided to revisit the project, this time through the lens of Instagram, inviting Irish and international artists who live and work well beyond my 5 km boundary, from cities such as Los Angeles, London, Berlin and Dublin. The shared global experience of the pandemic brought to the fore a collective awareness of being in it together. Forming an artist-led group show therefore seemed logical.
