Stephen Bush Paintings & Artwork for Sale | Stephen Bush Art Value Price Guide

May. 14, 2024
STEPHEN BUSH, MYTH MAKER, 1986
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 MYTH MAKER, 1986 oil on linen 198.0 x 106.0 cm bears inscription on stretcher bar verso: "MYTH MAKER" Stephen Bush 21/11/86 – 1/12/86 PROVENANCE The John L. Stewart Collection, New York Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, purchased from the above by private treaty in 2014 © Stephen Bush/Copyright Agency 2024 This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery
Deutscher and Hackett
Apr. 11, 2024
§ STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Venetian Red No. 11 1995 oil on linen 101 x 137cm
Est: $3,000 - $5,000
§ STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Venetian Red No. 11 1995 oil on linen 101 x 137cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Lawson~Menzies, Sydney, 19 June 2014, lot 27 Corporate collection, Melbourne Menzies, Melbourne, 10 August 2017, lot 121 Private collection, Melbourne OTHER NOTES: © Stephen Bush/Copyright Agency, 2024
Leonard Joel
Mar. 19, 2024
§ STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Venetian Red No. 11 1995 oil on linen 101 x 137cm
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
§ STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Venetian Red No. 11 1995 oil on linen 101 x 137cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Lawson~Menzies, Sydney, 19 June 2014, lot 27 Corporate collection, Melbourne Menzies, Melbourne, 10 August 2017, lot 121 Private collection, Melbourne OTHER NOTES: © Stephen Bush/Copyright Agency, 2024
Leonard Joel
Aug. 09, 2022
STEPHEN BUSH, BLUFF, 1990–91
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 BLUFF, 1990–91 oil on linen 152.5 x 122.0 cm 171.5 x 141.0 cm (frame) signed, dated and inscribed with title on stretcher bar verso: “Bluff” / Stephen / Bush / 90–91 signed and dated on stretcher bar verso: Stephen Bush 17/12/90 – 14/ 1/91 PROVENANCE Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne (label attached verso) The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, Melbourne, acquired from the above EXHIBITED Stephen Bush, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne, 22 June – 11 July 1991, cat. 3 BUS Art Collection, Wollongong City Gallery, Wollongong, New South Wales, 16 March – 12 April 1992, cat. 73 Mute Reason, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 27 April – 25 August 2013 Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel, The Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Project 2014, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 27 March – 6 July 2014, cat. 2 Colour and Movement, Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 February – 9 June 2016 Morning, Noon and Night, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 13 July – 13 October 2019 on long term loan to Wollongong City Art Gallery, New South Wales LITERATURE Nainby, B., Stanhope, Z., and Furlonger, K., The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, in association with Latrobe Regional Gallery, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 16, 158 (illus.), 214 Gellatly, K. (et al.), Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2014, cat. 2, pp. 12, 26, 27 (illus.), 54 This work is located in our Sydney Gallery © Stephen Bush/Copyright Agency 2022
Deutscher and Hackett
Jul. 14, 2022
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Deep Deeper 2003 oil on linen
Est: $3,200 - $4,500
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Deep Deeper 2003 oil on linen signed and dated on stretcher bar verso: Stephen Bush 2003 117 x 137cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (label verso) Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 5 June 2018, lot 168 (label verso) Private collection, Melbourne OTHER NOTES: © Stephen Bush/Copyright Agency 2022
Leonard Joel
Jun. 28, 2022
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Deep Deeper 2003 oil on linen
Est: $4,500 - $6,500
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Deep Deeper 2003 oil on linen signed and dated on stretcher bar verso: Stephen Bush 2003 117 x 137cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (label verso) Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 5 June 2018, lot 168 (label verso) Private collection, Melbourne OTHER NOTES: © Stephen Bush/Copyright Agency 2022
Leonard Joel
Nov. 23, 2021
Stephen Bush (b. 1958)
Est: $20,000 - $30,000
Isidore, 2010 oil on canvas, signed, dated and inscribed on stretcher verso 'Stephen Bush, Isidore, 2010'
Shapiro Auctioneers
Nov. 19, 2020
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Row Cropper 1986
Est: $9,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Row Cropper 1986 oil on linen 109.0 x 166.0 cm signed and dated verso: Stephen Bush 17/2/86 - 3/3/86 label attached verso with artist's name, title, date, medium and dimensions
Menzies
Jul. 02, 2020
Stephen Bush - The lure of Van Diemens Land 1989 s…
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
Stephen Bush - The lure of Van Diemens Land 1989 signed, dated and inscribed on stretcher verso, Provenance on Request
Lawsons
May. 05, 2020
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Lily of the Valley 2008 oil and enamel on linen
Est: $9,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Lily of the Valley 2008 oil and enamel on linen signed, dated, and titled on stretcher bar verso: Stephen Bush 'Lily of the Valley' 2008 101.5 x 94.5cm PROVENANCE: With Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Leonard Joel
Nov. 27, 2019
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, LURE OF PARIS #29, 2011, oil on linen
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 LURE OF PARIS #29, 2011 oil on linen SIGNED: signed, dated, and inscribed with title on stretcher bar verso: Stephen Bush The Lure of Paris #29 2011 DIMENSIONS: 183.0 x 183.0 cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Adelaide LITERATURE: Stephen Bush Online Catalogue Raisonné: [https://www.stephenjbush.com/portfolio-items/the-lure-of-paris-29/] (accessed 21/10/19) ESSAY: With his exuberant eclecticism and wit, Stephen Bush is internationally renowned as the author of sublime, cryptic works that seek to confound and provoke through their incongruous juxtaposition of elements and tantalisingly playful repetition of motifs. Transforming the very act of painting into performative representations, thus his art typically contemplates the material and conceptual parameters of his metier; creativity and the role of the artist; and traditional conventions of originality and replication, with all their associated assumptions about high and low culture, authenticity and value. As Kelly Gellatly elucidates, 'At the heart of Stephen Bush's art 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’.1 A recurring motif in Bush’s oeuvre, the elephant as a subject first appeared in the artist’s acclaimed ‘Lure of Paris' series (1992 – 94) featured here, with numerous monochromatic depictions of Jean de Brunoff's portly Babar the Elephant traversing a rugged, Turneresque landscape. According to the original French children's story, Babar travels from Africa to an unnamed city where he is 'civilised' by Western society – adopting Western cultural dress, customs, and behaviours – before then returning to the jungle to rule over his fellow elephants. With his natty three-piece suit and penchant for red wine and sculpture, Babar brought an unmistakably French form of civilisation to his herd – hence Bush’s title, which suggests Babar is beholden to Paris, the locus of French culture and its lure of style, order and bourgeois living. By displacing his protagonist not only from Africa and his ‘pre-civilised’ nature, but from the simple line drawings of children’s book illustration to a sublime, nineteenth-century Romantic landscape, Bush seeks to critique both colonialism and more specifically, the power of art and particular styles to create and perpetuate colonialist myths. Exploring the language and ideologies of nineteenth-century academic painting, thus Bush’s serial treatment of the same composition in his ‘Lure of Paris’ paintings such as the present, may be understood as questioning the presumed equivalence of creativity and originality. Vowing to produce a version of the work once a year, from memory, indefinitely – and remarkably he is still going twenty-seven years later –Bush proposes, rather, a particular, circular concept of originality which, in separating creativity and originality, suggests a more complex understanding of the term that has been lost in modernist and postmodernist polemic.2 As Chris McAuliffe explains in his introduction the catalogue accompanying the inaugural exhibition of the series at Robert Lindsay Gallery, Melbourne in July 1994, ‘his paintings are doubly derivative: they emulate the conventions of the nineteenth-century landscape, and they repeat the artist’s own oeuvre’.3 Each painting is seemingly a replica of the last, yet they are all in fact individual, original pieces, handmade or ‘created’ by the artist himself without mechanical intervention or the aide of digital photography. Accordingly, as McAuliffe highlights, ‘The copy and the original here meet in paradoxical union. There is no perfect copy, it must have some originality; there is no perfect original, it must be derivative of the history of painting’.4 Indeed, with such playful theatricality, Bush's compositions – inevitably similar but always slightly different – encourage the viewer in a postmodern world deluged with simulated images ‘to push the meaning, to force a response’. As New York based art critic, Jonathan Goodman, suggests, Bush ‘… is deeply serious about the role of art as witness, which is why he keeps returning time and again to his elephant painting, to ensure 'I don't forget where that passion, all those years ago, began’.5 1. Gellatly, K., 'Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel' in Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel, exhibition catalogue, Ian Potter Museum of Art, 2014, p. 20 2. McAuliffe, C., 'Stephen Bush: Serial Originality', in Stephen Bush: The Lure of Paris, Robert Lindsay Gallery, Melbourne, 1994 3. ibid. 4. ibid. 5. Goodman quoted in Bellamy, L., ‘The long call of a little elephant’, The Age, Melbourne, 31 July 2004 VERONICA ANGELATOS
Deutscher and Hackett
Jul. 30, 2018
STEPHEN WEE TJAPANANGKA (born 20th Century) Bush Tomato Sky 1988 acrylic on linen
Est: $1,000 - $1,500
STEPHEN WEE TJAPANANGKA (born 20th Century) Bush Tomato Sky 1988 acrylic on linen inscribed verso with artist's name and Warlayirti Artists cat no.065 and GA22 61 x 91cm PROVENANCE: Warlayirti Artists, WA (accompanied by a certificate of authenticity) Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard Joel
Jun. 05, 2018
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Deep Deeper 2003 oil on linen
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Deep Deeper 2003 oil on linen signed and dated verso to stretcher: Stephen Bush 2003 117 x 137cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard Joel
Aug. 10, 2017
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958, Venetian Red No.11 1995
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958, Venetian Red No.11 1995 STEPHEN BUSH born 1958, Venetian Red No.11 1995 oil on linen 101.0 x 137.0 cm Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Lawson-Menzies, Sydney, 19 June 2014, lot 27 Company collection, Melbourne
Menzies
May. 10, 2017
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, LADY CAMPBELL WEED DUKE OF NORMANDY, 2010, oil on canvas
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, LADY CAMPBELL WEED DUKE OF NORMANDY, 2010, oil on canvas SIGNED: signed, dated and inscribed verso: Stephen Bush 2010 Lady Campbell Weed Duke of Normandy DIMENSIONS: 76.0 x 76.0 cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne at Auckland Art Fair, Auckland, 2010
Deutscher and Hackett
Sep. 06, 2016
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Mayonnaise 1 1996 oil on primed paper
Est: $1,000 - $1,500
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Mayonnaise 1 1996 oil on primed paper artist name and title on label verso 41.5 x 62cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, cat. no. 24 (label verso) Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard Joel
Aug. 23, 2016
Stephen Bush (b. 1958)
Est: $25,000 - $35,000
Stephen Bush (b. 1958) Alpine Engine, 1995 oil on canvas, signed and dated on stretcher verso 'Stephen Bush, 21/3/95-20/6/95'
Shapiro Auctioneers
Sep. 24, 2015
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Gone Dead 2009
Est: $7,500 - $9,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Gone Dead 2009 oil on linen 76.5 x 87.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed verso: Stephen Bush 'Gone dead' 2009
Menzies
Aug. 26, 2015
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, , VENETIAN RED (FALLING WATER), 1995, oil on canvas
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, VENETIAN RED (FALLING WATER), 1995, oil on canvas DIMENSIONS: 84.0 x 153.0 cm EXHIBITED: Venetian Red, Robert Lindsay Gallery, Melbourne, November 1995 PROVENANCE: Robert Lindsay Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 26, 2015
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, JUST WAIT TILL NOW BECOMES THEN, 1996, oil on canvas
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, JUST WAIT TILL NOW BECOMES THEN, 1996, oil on canvas SIGNED: signed, dated and inscribed verso: JUST WAIT TILL NOW BECOMES THEN / Stephen Bush / 21/11/96 DIMENSIONS: 198.0 x 239.0 cm EXHIBITED: Blackwood Skyline, Stephen Bush: Work in Progress #5, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, 2003, cat. 19 PROVENANCE: Robert Lindsay Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne ESSAY: With his exuberant eclecticism and wit, Stephen Bush is internationally renowned as the author of sublime, cryptic works that seek to confound and provoke through their incongruous juxtaposition of elements and tantalisingly playful repetition of motifs. Transforming the very act of painting into performative representations, his art offers compelling meditation upon creativity and the role of the artist; notions of the original and the copy (high and low culture, authenticity and value); and upon both the materiality the conceptual parameters of his metier. As Kelly Gellatly elucidates, 'At the heart of Stephen Bush's art 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.'1 The elephant as a subject first appeared in Bush's oeuvre in 1992 with 'The Lure of Paris' series featuring numerous, monochromatic depictions of Jean de Brunoff's portly Babar the Elephant traversing a rugged, Turneresque landscape. According to the original French children's story, Babar travels to Paris from Africa where he is 'civilised' by Western society - adopting Western cultural dress, customs, and behaviours - before then returning to the jungle to 'civilise' his fellow elephants. Revisiting the subject almost thirty times since, Bush's interpretations thus explore Australia's postcolonial identity, 'from the 1960s when many Australians felt the pull to Europe's sophistication and culture, though to the 90s and beyond, when the impact of white settlement on Aborigines started to spark regret and confusion.'2 In Just Wait Till Then Becomes Now, 1996, connotations of loss and displacement are continued, with people here dressed in ill-fitting elephant suits plodding around absurdly in a lush green alpine setting. Moreover, that the scene appears so awkward - just a little too stilted, too sublime to be sincere - alludes to the way in which the artist perceives the history of Western art and culture has been manipulated and contrived, as Bush asserts: 'chaps standing in front of the diorama of an alpine scene - all linked together but looking very rigid and artificial - this is how I see the history of art!'3 Derived from the lyrics of the song 'Wasting Time' 1993 by The JudyBats (an alternative Tennessee rock band active during the late 80s and early 90s), the title of the present work attests not only to Bush's interest in sophisticated quotation from a myriad of diverse sources including music, literature, film, art history, mass media, botany and horticulture. More significantly perhaps, it reveals the artist's deeper conceptual concerns. Like the almost identical composition When I Was Here, I Wanted to Be There, 1994, the work on offer poignantly reminds us of the impossibility of living in the present moment. Indeed, for all their playful theatricality, Bush's compositions - inevitably similar but always slightly different - encourage the viewer in a postmodern world deluged with simulated images 'to push the meaning, to force a response'. As New York based art critic Jonathan Goodman elucidates, Bush 'is deeply serious about the role of art as witness', which is why he keeps returning time and again to his elephant painting, to ensure 'I don't forget where that passion, all those years ago, began.'4 1. Gellatly, K., 'Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel', Stephen Bush: Steenhuffel, exhibition catalogu
Deutscher and Hackett
May. 06, 2015
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, PONTIAC JUST IN, 1987, oil on canvas
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958, PONTIAC JUST IN, 1987, oil on canvas SIGNED: signed, dated and inscribed verso on stretcher: "PONTIAC JUST IN" / Stephen Bush / 6/8/87 / 17/8/87 DIMENSIONS: 60.5 x 50.5 cm PROVENANCE: Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne (label attached verso) Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney (label attached verso) Goodmans Auctioneers, Sydney, 9 May 1994, lot 358 Private collection, Sydney Shapiro Auctioneers, Sydney, 3 May 2009, lot 43 Private collection, Melbourne
Deutscher and Hackett
Jun. 19, 2014
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 The Lure of Van Dieman's
Est: $5,000 - $7,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 The Lure of Van Dieman's Land 1989 oil on canvas 101.5 x 91.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed on stretcher verso: The lure of Van Dieman's land/ Stephen Bush 8/8/89 Sutton Gallery, Melbourne| CLAIMING: An Installation of Paintings by Stephen Bush, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, February - March 1991, cat.2|I to Eye, Ballarat and Bendigo Art Galleries, Victoria, 2007 - 2008| Cass, N., Murray, K., & Engberg, J., CLAIMING: An Installation of Paintings by Stephen Bush, ACCA Publishing, Melbourne, cat.2 (illus. back cover)| (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Lawson~Menzies
Jun. 19, 2014
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 DAR-DAR-DARDA-DAAR 2001 oil
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 DAR-DAR-DARDA-DAAR 2001 oil on linen 51.0 x 56.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed on stretcher verso: Stephen Bush 2001/ 'dar-dar-darda-daar' Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Stephen Bush: Brighter Later, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, May 2002 (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Lawson~Menzies
Jun. 19, 2014
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Venetian Red No.11 1995 oil
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Venetian Red No.11 1995 oil on linen 101.0 x 137.0 cm Sutton Gallery, Melbourne| (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Lawson~Menzies
Jun. 19, 2014
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Lily of the Valley 2008 oil
Est: $9,000 - $12,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Lily of the Valley 2008 oil and enamel on linen 101.5 x 94.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed verso: Stephen Bush 'Lily of the Valley' 2008| Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (label attached verso) (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Lawson~Menzies
Jun. 19, 2014
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Have I Got It? 1990 oil on
Est: $7,000 - $10,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Have I Got It? 1990 oil on linen 101.5 x 121.5 cm signed and dated on stretcher verso: Stephen Bush/ 27/2/90-15/3/90 Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne (label attached verso)| Monash Gallery, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne, 1991, cat.5 (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Lawson~Menzies
May. 19, 2014
§ STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958)
Est: $22,000 - $32,000
Southeast in the Summer 2006 oil and enamel on linen signed, titled and dated verso 183 x 183cm PROVENANCE: Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Menzies, Melbourne, 24/06/2010, lot 17 EXHIBITED: Stephen Bush: Gelderland, Sante Fe, USA, 10 February-13 May 2007
Leonard Joel
Mar. 20, 2014
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Behind the Silos 1982 oil
Est: $7,000 - $10,000
STEPHEN BUSH born 1958 Behind the Silos 1982 oil on canvas signed and dated lower right: S. Bush 82|inscribed verso: SB.010.91
Menzies
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 POMME DE TERRE #5, 1999 oil on linen
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 POMME DE TERRE #5, 1999 oil on linen SIGNED signed, dated and inscribed versoon stretcher: Stephen Bush 1999 #5 DIMENSIONS 79.0 x 119.5 cm PROVENANCE The John L. Stewart Collection, New York,purchased directly from the artist, c1999 ESSAY One could argue that Stephen Bush's paintings hover on the brink ofobsession. Fascinated by unusual characters and objects, Bush haspainted and repainted certain images, people, and things over decades,as if haunted by them. We have seen this with the repetition of theelephant, the caretaker, the explorer, and the tractor in his work, amongother creatures. Why does Bush persistently resurrect his characters, orpaint the same scene time and time again? In the opinion of Americancurator Liza Statton, the repetition 'speaks to the physical and emotionalrigors of the painting process' and 'Bush's pure, unadulterated manuallabour.'1 Perhaps this dedication also indicates the artist's desire to getat some elusive truth lurking within the painting, something which is notso easily accessible (to viewer or artist) at first glance. One such motif that has captured Bush's fascination since his earliestwork is the potato. This fixation may be a result of the artist's ownagricultural background, growing up on a farm outside Colac, Victoria,and his long-term interest in humans' cultivation and exploitation ofnature. In Bush's Venetian Red series there is a painting entitled PotatoArt Museum (venetian red), 1993, in which the walls of a museum arecuriously lined with images of potatoes. Several similar works followed,including Potato Museum, 1995, which also depicts a museum interior,at the centre of which sits a painting of three potatoes, ironically anotherwork by Bush humorously named This Year's New Pontiacs. Bush's mysterious 1997-99 series Pomme De Terre is perhaps a moreabstract rendering of the potato. This series evolved from the artist's1996 residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where eachday for the course of the residency he drew and then ate a potato. Atthe conclusion of the residency he threw all his potato drawings into agreen wheelie bin, and this became the basis of this ambiguous series ofpaintings. As the audience, we are privy to none of this back-story, andthus we see no more than the tactile shape and colour of the rubbishbins. In this way, Bush demonstrates his concerns about post-colonialhistorical and landscape painting. That is; there is more, far more, tounderstanding history, then what we can tell from a picture. 1. Statton, L., 'No consolation prizes', in Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe,New Mexico, 2007 exhibition catalogue LEAH CROSSMAN
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 A CARETAKER (4) , 1988 oil on canvas
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 A CARETAKER (4) , 1988 oil on canvas SIGNED signed and dated verso on stretcher:Stephen Bush 1988 DIMENSIONS 61.0 x 71.0 cm PROVENANCE Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne The John L. Stewart Collection, New York EXHIBITED Stephen Bush, Powell Street Gallery,Melbourne, 1989, cat. 15 (label attached verso) Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe,New Mexico, USA, 10 February - 13 May 2007
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 A CARETAKER (3) , 1989 oil on linen
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 A CARETAKER (3) , 1989 oil on linen SIGNED signed and dated verso on stretcher:Stephen Bush / 31/1/89 - 16/2/89 DIMENSIONS 61.0 x 71.0 cm PROVENANCE Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne The John L. Stewart Collection, New York EXHIBITED Stephen Bush, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne,1989, cat. 16 (label attached verso) Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe,New Mexico, USA, 10 February - 13 May 2007
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 A CARETAKER (2) , 1988 oil on linen
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 A CARETAKER (2) , 1988 oil on linen SIGNED signed and inscribed verso on stretcher:Stephen Bush "A CARETAKER" DIMENSIONS 71.0 x 61.0 cm PROVENANCE Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne The John L. Stewart Collection, New York EXHIBITED Stephen Bush, Powell Street Gallery,Melbourne, 1989, cat. 17 (label attached verso) Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe,New Mexico, USA, 10 February - 13 May 2007
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 THE CARETAKER, 1988 oil on linen
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 THE CARETAKER, 1988 oil on linen SIGNED signed, dated and inscribed verso on stretcher: "THECARETAKER" Stephen Bush 24/10/88 DIMENSIONS 71.0 x 61.0 cm PROVENANCE Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne The John L. Stewart Collection, New York EXHIBITED Stephen Bush, Powell Street Gallery,Melbourne, 1989 (label attached verso) Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe,New Mexico, USA, 10 February - 13 May 2007
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush 1955 VERT DE SEVRES, 2004 oil and enamel on linen
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
Stephen Bush 1955 VERT DE SEVRES, 2004 oil and enamel on linen SIGNED signed and dated three times verso:Stephen Bush 2004inscribed verso: Vert de sevres DIMENSIONS 183.0 x 183.0 cm PROVENANCE The John L. Stewart Collection, New York,purchased directly from the artist, c2004 EXHIBITED Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe,New Mexico, USA, 10 February - 13 May 2007 ESSAY The caretaker is perhaps the most powerful and encumbered characterin Bush's repertoire. His earliest appearance is in Bush's 1988/1989Caretaker series (lots 73 - 76) in which he dons a garishly gold full-bodysuit, a call-back to Elvis Presley's gold suit from his 1968 comebacktour.1 But the caretaker is rife with more symbolic significance than thisone peculiar cultural allusion. The same character reappears later inBush's 2004 works Swamp Gum and Vert de Sevres, this time subsumedwithin great swells of psychedelic colour. The caretaker's costume alsocalls to mind a beekeeper suit, and in this way the character evokesBush's earlier themes of conquest, capture and colonisation. Thebeekeeper-figure appears as a kind of colonising agent, master of histrade, tirelessly 'reigning in the bee'.2 Or is it more harmless than this? Swathed in his unwieldy suit, thecaretaker's identity remains out of reach, the character protectedfrom our curious gaze. Like so much in Bush's paintings, the suit isa kind of barrier preventing the viewer from perceiving what is reallygoing on in the narrative. We wonder who the caretaker is tending to;what he is responsible for. He appears time and time again in thesepaintings, patiently toiling away at his repetitive discipline beneath thephosphorescent sky. Perhaps the caretaker can be read as a moreaffirmative figure, a guardian of sorts. Maybe his secret business is theprotection of endangered civilisations - of the human world, and thefragile state it has found itself in post-colonisation. The caretaker may also be a substitute for the artist himself. Up to thispoint, Stephen Bush has appeared in the majority of his works as one ofhis characters; in drag, in uniform, in colonial outfits, driving tractors orchopping down trees. The Caretaker paintings are among the first imagesin which the artist as a character disappears. One has to assume that it isthe artist hidden within the caretaker's suit. The protective clothing maybe but a reminder of the potential peril of his chosen career, protectinghimself from the dangers and the terror of his work. It is also worth noting that although similar in content, the styles in whichthe four caretaker works are painted are quite different. In fact, thesefour painting were each depicted with their own deliberate referentialstyle. The Caretaker (lot 73) draws upon the Hudson River School, andin particular Frederick Church who was instrumental in defining theaesthetic romanticism of the American Landscape. A Caretaker (2) (lot74) alludes to the Rocky Mountain School, a group of artists in America'sWild West inspired to paint large scenes of the Rocky Mountains withan emphasis on dramatic effect. A Caretaker (3) (lot 75) is paintedin homage to the Pre-Raphaelites who painted with an accuracy thatmimicked photography. Finally, A Caretaker (4) (lot 76) recalls theNazarene movement adopted by German painters in the early 19thCentury who aimed to revive a more spiritual element in their work. TheCaretaker series pays very specific tribute to these movements whichBush saw as the predominant schools of landscape painting in the 19thCentury and who contributed significantly to the way the public viewedthe natural landscape. 1. Natasha Bullock, 'When I was here, I wanted to be there', Art and Australia, vol. 49,no. 2, Summer 2011 2. Ashley Crawford, 'Metaphor, Melancholia and Mayhem' in Stephen Bush: Gelderland,SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2007 exhibition catalogue LEAH CROSSMAN
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 TYPE CAST, 1998 oil on linen
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 TYPE CAST, 1998 oil on linen SIGNED signed and dated verso on stretcher: Stephen Bush 1998 DIMENSIONS 198.0 x 233.5 cm PROVENANCE Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles The John L. Stewart Collection, New York EXHIBITED Overlander, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, 1999 ESSAY The elephant is an enigmatic character that appears many times in Stephen Bush's work. We encounter him throughout the 1990s in the form of people cloaked in drooping elephant suits, plodding around absurdly in a lush alpine setting as in Type Cast, 1998, A Painting for the South Wing, 1995, and When I was Here I Wanted to be There, 1995. The elephants in these works serve as powerful symbols of the loss and displacement experienced by people and cultures post-colonisation. More than this, the awkward elephants make us feel as if these images are just a little too stilted, too sublime to be sincere. These paintings present 'chaps standing in front of the diorama of an alpine scene - all linked together but looking very rigid and artificial - is how I see the history of art!'1 Around the same time the elephant reappeared in Bush's renowned series The Lure of Paris, this time in the shape of children's book character Babar, clad in a green three-piece suit. In the original 1931 French text by Jean de Brunhoff, Babar flees the jungle after the death of his mother to find a new way of life in a large, unnamed city, after which he returns to the jungle to 'civilise' his fellow elephants, dressing them all in suits. Bush depicts multiple stuffed Babar dolls traversing craggy mountain tops and stormy seas, an intrepid explorer. He has painted Babar more than thirty times since 1992, obsessively reworking the same image, trying to get at some indecipherable truth, but perhaps getting further and further away from it with each rendition. The elephant has persisted as a colonising agent in Bush's work, but above all as a reminder of the way in which the history of art and culture has been manipulated and contrived through the channels of painting, photography, and journalism. 1. Stephen Bush, from Barbour, J. (ed.), 'Interview with Stephen Bush by Peter Cripps', 1987 LEAH CROSSMAN
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 28, 2013
Stephen Bush born 1955 THE NATURE OF A BAR PAINTING, 1988 oil on canvas
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
Stephen Bush born 1955 THE NATURE OF A BAR PAINTING, 1988 oil on canvas SIGNED signed, dated and inscribed verso on stretcher: "The nature of bar painting" / Stephen Bush 1988 DIMENSIONS 167.0 x 198.0 cm PROVENANCE Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne The John L. Stewart Collection, New York EXHIBITED Stephen Bush, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne, 1989 (label attached verso) ESSAY The Nature of a Bar Painting, 1988 calls to mind a host of art historical references. Most notably, this work refers to an infamous oil painting by French artist Gustave Courbet entitled La Femme au perroquet (Woman with a Parrot), housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This painting depicted a nude woman in almost the same pose as our lady in The Nature of a Bar Painting, lounging seductively with her hair sprawled out behind her in a dishevelled fashion. La Femme au perroquet aroused great controversy when it was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1866 as it was considered by many to be indecent. Undoubtedly the nude portrait of a beautiful young woman, Chloe,by Jules Lefebvre, also impressed upon Bush when painting this work. Chloe is Melbourne's most revered bar painting, acquired by Young and Jacksons hotel in 1908 after a controversial exhibition history, the work having been withdrawn from exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1883. This painting captured the imagination of Australians in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with nude paintings of women becoming ubiquitous at that time in bars throughout Australia. Bush's painting, however, is not quite so earnest; hints of the absurd haunt this image. The Nature of a Bar Paintingpresents a voluptuous, nude woman, reclining lasciviously in the foreground of some incongruous remote setting. The landscape is ruggedly Australian, and two small figures in the background watch the naked woman furtively while chopping down a tree. Perhaps they are wondering who this woman is, and why she is lounging here, of all places, in the middle of the wilderness. Unlike Lefebvre's Chloe, or Courbet's Woman with a Parrot, there is something staged and a little ridiculous about the composition of our work. Bush completed numerous paintings in monochrome palettes through the 1980s and 90s, most often in Venetian red, black and white, or purple. In these works Bush tests the assumption that photography or any other type of purportedly objective documentation could in fact be just that: objective. Bush's monochromatic paintings always strive to tell a historical story, but they also make explicit that the telling of any story through art or journalism is at best, propaganda. LEAH CROSSMAN
Deutscher and Hackett
Aug. 14, 2012
Stephen Bush born 1958 THE LURE OF PARIS #24 2004 oil on canvas
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
Stephen Bush born 1958 THE LURE OF PARIS #24 2004 oil on canvas signed, dated and inscribed 'Stephen Bush The lure of Paris #24 2004' verso 183 X 183CM PROVENANCE Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney Private Collection, Sydney
Smith & Singer
Jul. 30, 2012
Stephen Bush Triumph oil on canvas 74 x 81 cm
Est: $4,000 - $6,000
Stephen Bush Triumph oil on canvas 74 x 81 cm
Mossgreen Auctions
Jun. 24, 2012
STEPHEN BUSH (BORN 1958) Rue Geoffroy L'Arnier 1998 oil on canvas on board
Est: $800 - $1,200
STEPHEN BUSH (BORN 1958) Rue Geoffroy L'Arnier 1998 oil on canvas on board signed, titled and dated verso 28 x 36cm
Leonard Joel
Jun. 20, 2012
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958 Alpine Engine 1995 oil on
Est: $28,000 - $35,000
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958 Alpine Engine 1995 oil on canvas 198.0 x 238.5 cm, signed and dated on stretcher verso: Stephen Bush 21/3/95 20/6/95, (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Menzies
Jun. 20, 2012
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958 Isidore 2010 oil on canvas
Est: $35,000 - $45,000
STEPHEN BUSH, born 1958 Isidore 2010 oil on canvas 183.5 x 183.5 cm, signed, dated and inscribed on stretcher verso: Stephen Bush 'Isidore' 2010, (c) Stephen Bush. Licensed by VISCOPY Ltd, Australia
Menzies
Aug. 11, 2011
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) - Lauterbrunnental 2004 oil on canvas
Est: $12,000 - $16,000
STEPHEN BUSH (born 1958) Lauterbrunnental 2004 oil on canvas 106.5 x 182.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed on stretcher verso: Stephen Bush 2004 'LAUTERBRUNNENTAL'
Lawsons
Apr. 20, 2011
STEPHEN BUSH THE LURE OF PARIS #18, 2000 183.0 x
Est: $30,000 - $40,000
STEPHEN BUSH THE LURE OF PARIS #18, 2000 183.0 x 183.0 cm oil on canvas
Deutscher and Hackett
May. 14, 2010
STEpHEN BUSH
Est: $8,000 - $12,000
Tallow-wood Signed, titled and dated “Stephen Bush ‘Tallow-wood’ 2005” on the reverse.
Phillips
Mar. 06, 2010
STEPHEN BUSH
Est: $12,000 - $18,000
Maculata Signed, titled and dated “Stephen Bush ‘Maculata’ 2005” on the reverse.
Phillips