Stephen Bush, King's Way, oil painting, Melbourne, 1982
Summary
Like ‘Pool Hall’, which is also held in the collection, ‘Kings Way’ is a beautiful tonal work that cuts a great line between the painterly and the photographic. Painted in 1982, it depicts a view across a flat roofscape of factories butted up to one another, this unfolding urban landscape accentuated by the painting’s wide format. Stephen Bush has worked with the subject of the city over a long period, often fascinated by its banalities, such as rubbish bins. His work takes a great interest in aspects of the city that would not normally ‘get a guernsey’ on canvas in a Town Hall – rooftops, pool halls and the like. This work offers a painterly documentation of Melbourne at a very specific time, the early 1980s predating the intense transformation of the inner city over recent decades.
