Jane Lombard Gallery is delighted to present The Colour of Words II, a solo exhibition by Jane Bustin. Building upon her 2020 exhibition, The Colour of Words, which debuted at Jane Lombard Gallery only a few weeks before stay-at-home-orders were issued in New York City, The Colour of Words II ruminates on her practice-based research as a recipient of a residency award at the Mark Rothko Centre in Latvia during the summer of 2019. The exhibition will open on Wednesday, June 30th, from 1 PM – 6 PM, and remain on view through August 6th, 2021.

For over a year now the colours have dimmed, as if a small amount of Davey’s grey had been added to everything around. The faded hours of time slipping by, like an old worn chiffon scarf between her finger tips. Everything taken away, still and quiet, a low key unravelling, like some lost little Chopin trill. Yet, to be near and far, in fact 72 inches apart, Christina the Astonishing gripped her wand and kept her distance, her clothes porous to the droplets of pain expired by others, she wore, like nylon armour,  the fluorescent tabard which screeched its warning waltz Come and go , come and go , come and go… – Jane Bustin, 2021.

Her residency at the Mark Rothko Centre, in the former 1833 Fortress just outside of the city of Daugavpils, Bustin describes with a richness of “histories, secrets, and buried memories within its walls” where she made her studio. Situated in a brooding outbuilding that once housed a dining hall for Napoleonic soldiers, a prisoner of war camp, a post-war aviation engineering school and underground raves in the 1980s. The strangeness and beauty of Bustin’s surroundings compelled an intensive study of her quarters. She suggests the space itself entranced her and directed her practice in those weeks and beyond. Each work in The Colour Of Words is a response to her surroundings; an attempt to capture and preserve precious, sensory rich moments and a reflection on the temporal nature of remembering. Tiled floors, antique lamps and chipped wall paints were reborn through glazed porcelains, burnt silks, crushed oyster shells and beet-dyed wood, giving the past a present, vivid body. 

The unpredictable nature of the last 15 months presented people with a new relationship with time and sense of place. There were days when everything felt grey, dull and dim; days that felt so similar to the ones before and following, they were hard to discern. Bustin’s works in The Colour of Words II, so luminous and vibrant, shine with hope, shaking loose the sense of stagnancy in anticipation of brighter futures.

Jane Bustin, born 1964, London, studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic. She has had solo shows
in London, Berlin, Paris, New York, Sydney, as well as group shows at Whitechapel, London;
Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh; Royal Academy, London; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and Kettle’s
Yard, Cambridge. She is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner, British Council awards and the
Mark Rothko Memorial Fund Award. Bustin has work in public collections, including: Victoria &
Albert Museum, Ferens Museum and Yale Centre. A performance project, Faun, including live
music and dance was presented for Art Night London, 2018 at London County Hall, Southbank.