Tracey Bush
Tracey Bush is a British Artist who works with paper. After obtaining an MFA in Printmaking from Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts London, Tracey made a research trip to South Korea, where she studied paper culture. After this travel scholarship, funded by the Stationers’ Company, Tracey began to view paper as the substance, rather than the surface of many of her artworks.
Tracey’s work is informed by the histories of Natural History collecting, which are often the province of amateur women enthusiasts. Through her lengthy career making artist’s books, Tracey has developed a dextrous approach to creating Art, involving a high level of craft skill, through which to explore humanity’s impact on the environment.
Most recently, Tracey was selected from an open call of 400 artists to take part in the 2022 Paper Biennale in the Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands. Tracey created new work installed in antique taxidermy cases from the Museum Schiedam exploring consumerism and lost knowledge. In 2023, a new collection of Tracey’s drawings with collage, based on ‘Nine Wild Plants’ will be featured in the curated exhibition Flowers Forever in the München Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung (with catalogue).
During her residency at the Centre for Print Research (CFPR), Tracey is creating an editioned print in which a cloud of night flying moths appear and disappear depending on the position of the viewer. Based on ‘Dusking’, the Victorian practice of trapping night flying moths, the print raises the possibility of an ‘insect apocalypse’, as biodiversity loss impacts moths, which are sensitive to environmental change. Dusking is hand screen printed using Mica-based pearlescent pigments which are directional and change in different viewing angles. These inks were developed to create unique lustre effects that otherwise occur only in nature.
Utilising the digital laser cutting and printing technologies at the CFPR, laborious hand cutting will be reinterpreted to create an editioned, fold out collection of British Butterflies, to be presented in entomology cases. Reprising Tracey’s fascination with conventions of Natural History collecting, the interrelated images will create a requiem for the Complete Collection of 59 British butterfly species. Over the last 4 decades 76% of British Butterflies have declined in number, as they are one of the first indicators of environmental change.
The UK butterflies are one of the best studied in the World. Tracey has been assisted in creating the Complete Collection by Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (department of Natural Science). The Complete Collection highlights biodiversity loss and is a dialogue between paper cut, embossed print and paper sculpture.
