Mohamed Omer Bushara - The sensuous drawings, paintings and print works of Mohamed Omer Bushara are assured but elusive. Neither wholly abstract, nor entirely figurative, each work emerges out of a dialogue between the artist's intuitive mark making and the surface upon which those marks are made. Defined by a very physical approach to the materials he uses, Bushara's work is a tragi-comedy of gestural defiance and a fight to the death between beauty and violence. Ink bleeds through the scars left by knifed incisions made into the low-grade paper of some works, while in other works, leftover scraps of paper or a canvas of cheaply acquired paper tablecloth are saturated in black and coloured inks to the point of near disintegration. In Bushara's hands the surface is a contested terrain relentlessly reworked over extended periods of time. There may be nothing precious about his materials or the way in which he treats them, but the resulting works are both tender and emotive, testifying to the fragile beauty of the human condition. In the series of ink wash drawings entitled A Woman Offering Her Child to Silence , the abstract rendering of a mother offering her child as a desperate and futile sacrifice fractures and recombines in dramatic succession. These monochrome works are presented in contrast to one of his large richly textured paintings made with dense layers of coloured acrylic inks. Abstract recurring motifs of crosses and a scratching out of the surface suggests acts of protest that temper a purely aesthetic engagement with the piece. Also displayed are some of Bushara's recent etchings that, while appearing more delicate in their execution, are no less arresting. Coming out of the political and cultural context of Bushara's native Sudan; a country torn apart by the legacy of colonialism and a long history of political corruption, the work of Bushara attests to the fraught battle for creative freedom that he has often fought. His work also speaks in a very immediate way of the horrors beset by the current humanitarian crisis in Darfur, West Sudan. -------------- Born in Omdurman, Sudan in 1946, Mohamed Omer Bushara studied geography at the University of Khartoum between 1967 and 1972. Predominantly self taught, Bushara was given his first solo exhibition at the British Council, Khartoum in 1974 and went on to win first prize in a competition run by the journal African Arts ( published by the African Studies Centre, University of California, Los Angeles) that same year. In 1975 he was awarded a British Council scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Since his exile from Sudan in 1981, Bushara has continued to pursue his work as an artist, exhibiting in the UK and internationally. In 2003 he was awarded the Marjory Field Award for Printmaking and became Artist in Residence at the Oxford Printmakers Workshop in 2004. His book of ink drawings and paintings entitled Atong , published by Grandir, France in 2003 is currently on display as part of the exhibition Sudan, past and present at The British Museum, London, which runs until January 2005. Bushara lives and works in Oxford. The works in this display have been selected and curated by Miria Swain, Assistant Curator at Modern Art Oxford. Copyright © Miria Swain |