Greenbush Art Group Presents Bug Life

The Greenbush Art Group, made up of Batchelor Institute visual arts graduates and students, returns to the Araluen Arts Centre with the exhibition Bug Life, the insect world rendered in sculpture. Following on from their previous exhibitions at Araluen, focusing on birds, dogs, and means of desert transport, this year's exhibition is based on insects, another ubiquitous form of desert life. The works in Bug Life are incredibly idiosyncratic, and distinctively Greenbush, reflecting their acute observation and creative playfulness. These works are unique interpretations of insects and existence in desert country, and of those imagined in places beyond.

The range of materials available to the students at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre is limited to inexpensive, recycled and repurposed items. They respond to these material limitations with great ingenuity and imagination.

For Bug Life, as part of the Visual Arts Certificate program delivered in partnership by the Batchelor Institute and NT Corrections, the students have explored various mediums, making work using clay, including eco and mono printed silk on clay, metal and found objects, upcycled jewellery, wool, raffia and wire.

The exhibition title and font style is a play on the term 'Thug Life', made famous by rapper 2Pac: "Though the term thug life is commonly misinterpreted to mean “criminal life,” this is not actually the intention of the phrase. Thug life is a term used with pride, to describe a person who started out with nothing and built themselves up to be something."

The Bug Life exhibition will be opened at 6pm on Friday 19 November by Bill Carroll, General Manager, Alice Springs Correctional Centre.

The exhibition will then run daily from 20 November 2021 until 13 February 2022 at the Araluen Arts Centre.