Anthea Bush, Icarus Helmet, 2006
Anthea Bush's strange looking objects combine the slickness of industry with softness and ephemerality, sometimes to poetic effect. Or sometimes with something more sinister implied. The Icarus Helmut suggests a recasting of the mythological icon of hubris, combined with cocky modern male--he fell to earth after climbing to high and then must have embraced the speed of the ground through road-hugging machinery. The folk hero of the road, the traveler, wanderer, seeker, explorer, with his hard helmet softened perhaps through the magic of his father the sun's intervention--some fascinating implications in this fetish looking object that seems to quote and redo Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered cup. Hard and soft together become more heroic by referring to the body of an anti-hero, in both subject and form. Icarus comes to life in the same guise in A Leopard Never Changes its Spots--we see him, helmeted, before he hits earth; or more likely: he is about to hit it a second time. Hubris cannot be kept at bay by a mere motorcycle helmet. Other work shows a hybrid of thin, shiny, slick surfaces melding with images from which one couldn't escape if wearing them. Perhaps one wouldn't want to--if shielded from the real world and enclosed in a virtual one--is that so bad after all? Improvements are long overdue. Her helmets suggests prototypes believably under development by god knows who.
Carter Foster
To find out more about Anthea Bush and to see more of her work click here.
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