A range of recent projects and exhibitions:

Neo-Neanderthals is a collaborative project between artists Robbie Bushe and Jeanne Cannizzo making imaginative use of the scientific data on the physical and cultural inheritance left to us by the Neanderthals. Their popular image since the first fossil finds in the 19th century has been of hairy, low-browed, unintelligent beings incapable of symbolic thought who, perhaps deservedly, were killed by invading humans. In 2010 that picture was overturned by DNA discoveries which revealed that Neanderthals and modern humans had at some point interbred.

The exhibition is a cross-medium experience including painting, drawing, sculpture and animation and celebrates the improvised and ‘hand-made’, the ‘lo-fi’ and the deliberately gauche or awkward. While acknowledging there are parallels with current pressing problems in the wider world, the exhibition’s optimism about humanity’s collective ability to survive comes alive through the artists’ chimerical creatures and subversive drawings and animations.

In April 2017 I started working on a larger scale on canvas, which allowed me to create and play with every more complex compositions. My fascination with civil engineering lead me to rediscover the art of the ‘cutaway illustration’ I used to devour in boys comics such as Eagle and Look and Learn which allow the viewer to have a look into an otherwise solid opaque object.. The use of this device also forms part of the basis of a collaboration with artist John Brown called ‘Playing in the Ruins’. John and I are looking at ways to combine our interest in playful pictorial explorations of town planning documents, instruction manual, retro prototypes and .reconstruction.

Robbie Bushe is represented by the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh.

Robbie Bushe is represented by the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh.

Robbie Bushe is represented by the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh.

In February 2007, I returned to live in Edinburgh and work at Edinburgh College of Art. It was an opportunity for me to return to Edinburgh domestic drama after over 15 years away.
I lived in a wonderful Georgian converted townhouse flat in Leith and was the subject and inspiration for most of the work during this time.