July 8th, 2021

~This month’s featured activities,

……A performative piece & installation show from artist Kota Bush, 28 July

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Art Lobby58 on Going Series on July,
Body / Bu (武) from the artist Kota Bush

Introduce 

the Artist

Kota

Memories before 2019 

On the corner of St George’s Bay Road and The Strand there are two large clumps of Aloe plants. The plants were presumably placed there to provide an aesthetical- ly pleasing break from the trucks and cars of the busy intersection. Walking past the Aloe plants on the way to school one day, I noticed tyre marks in the soil and car parts spread around. There had been an accident. A car had driven into the Aloe plants. No one was there and the damaged car had been removed but It felt as if the person in the car had somehow been saved. By crashing into the Aloe bushes, the fleshy Aloe leaves had cushioned the driver from the impact.

However, sections of the aloe plants had been severely damaged. They looked like they were hurting. I felt for the plant that had sacrificed itself and I gathered the broken pieces. I wanted to better understand this helping, healing plant and to see if it could heal other things.

Aloe has become a significant material and a means of connecting me to notions of balance, healing and repetitive process in real and symbolic terms. My practice brings together select- ed natural and found materials with ritualised, repetitive actions. Works come out of the daily rituals of life.

Ritual

Ritual is a practice, an observance and performance of daily acts and routines. Devel- oped from inner natural habits, repetitively performed acts seek and develop their own forms ceremonially. Daily practice develops awareness of the physical tool, the materi- al and the action and develops tools of knowledge and awareness.

Muscle memory

Muscle memory is developed through the observance of performing the practice of an everyday job in a ritualistic manner. The cycle ofdoing the same thing over and over, repetitively. Becoming aware of their own natural habits, the observer’s muscle feelings are clarified, performing with accuracy and speed accumulated through doing.

Visual Memory

Visual Memory is a memory from an experience which can be taken forward as an insight for future use. A memory that has been embedded through practice (repetition in the doing) becomes part of the visual senses and builds confidence. Visual memory is helpful as an insight that comes before rituals of daily performance. Transferring a confident vision of the task ahead prepares the body’s physical awareness for action in the present. A sense of trust is the goal. Trust is necessary so that every action can be performed with speed, accuracy, quality and balance.

Japan

I celebrate Japanese culture and the knowledge of my ancestors passed down to me.

In ancient Japanese history, a lot of traditional roles and manners where introduced from China. There are mysteries behind the ritual ways. Learning is about accepting mystery.

Grandmother

My Grandmother Tsuneko Ikeda is a Soroban Sensei (teacher), who taught me.

She has been teaching Soroban in Japan for many years, running after school lessons from a classroom above her home in Saitama prefecture.

She keeps her collection of Soroban there so it looks like a Soroban Museum.

Grandfather

Kisaburo Ikeda is my grandfather

He was a talented athlete who won the Japanese Pole Vault title in 1955.

He speaks about the Bamboo poles they used at that time. They would vault over the bar with the bamboo poles and land in a sand pit. The synthetic poles and mats of nowadays are very different.

I like to try to note the kinds of natural, authentic materials and manners from these stories and make connections with my practice.