Robbie Bushe, Byzantium Gallery, Edinburgh
Bushe’s idiosyncratic collection of drawings and paintings are influenced among other things by time spent as a Barman in Aberdeen and as a kitchen assistant Viva Mexico Edinburgh not the most dramatic of inspirations one might suppose, but he has exploited a fascination with kitchens and dirty washing to produce a series of often amusing, sometimes disturbing images which reveal a very precise method and an engaging understanding of form.
As much space is devoted to drawings as paintings, which provides a rare opportunity to compare methods in the two mediums. The drawings reveal a concern which is flattened out, but not disregarded in the paintings. These are, understandably, more concerned with colour and texture both of which are handled with dexterity. Murky forms contrast with luminous, smooth textures with rough. A half-lit world inhabited by people who are quite often not even there.
Bushe manages to create a mood, an atmosphere, a sense of place which entices you in but won’t let you stay. It’s a bleak, desolate place, and the paintings appear as icons of the unsettling aspects of our presence, looking in on us, a warning perhaps to look well at the mundane, domestic details of our lives, sometimes, ironically, in a humourous kind of irony. (Jo Roe)
Joe Roe, The List 22 December 1989 – 11 January 1990