Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Tereza Bušková artist

Multi-disciplinary artist Tereza Bušková was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1978. She immigrated to England in 1998 studying Fine Art at Northumbria University, then completing an MA in Fine Art Printmaking at the Royal College of Art. Bušková’s practice deals with ritual, tradition and craft, celebrating and reinterpreting Slavic as well as European customs through the media of print, performance and video.

Born: 1978 Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)

Year of Migration to the UK: 1998


Biography

Multi-disciplinary artist Tereza Bušková was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) on 9 November 1978 and immigrated to England in 1998. She became an au-pair in her gap year to improve her English prior to studying for a BA in Fine Art at Northumbria University (2001-2004); in 2007 she completed an MA in Fine Art Printmaking at the Royal College of Art. Her practice deals with ritual, tradition, and craft, celebrating and reinterpreting Slavic as well as European customs through the media of print, performance, and video. She describes her work as often, ‘beginning with improvised tableaux vivant and ritualistic narrative-free performance. Costumes, props, models and makeup are my tools’. She has developed collaborative creative relationships with actress playwright Zoë Simon, pioneering electric cellist Bela Emerson and curators including Elizabeth Neilson, among others. She feels that living and working in England has changed her view not only of Czech folklore, but also of her own work, reflecting in an interview in 2009 that’'what gave me all this rich experience was studying in the UK. I’ve been really lucky to be able to study... in very good schools, where I met very interesting artists, where I went to very interesting lectures. And I had the opportunity to try different techniques, to not just be based in the painting department but to experiment with different media, to cross over from the print-making department to film. That is something that doesn’t happen so easily in the Czech Republic’.

Bušková's work has been exhibited at the David Roberts Art Foundation, the Zabludowicz Gallery and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. She has exhibited, performed and lectured in a variety of spaces including Lincoln’s Chambers Farm Wood and Erdington High Street. Bušková's recent Clipping the Church series sought to revive an ancient and almost forgotten English tradition as part of which families would flock to local churches, holding hands with each other in order to encircle it with open arms. Bušková reflects that ‘as a Czech immigrant it struck me as a great way to literally bring people together to celebrate’. More than 200 people were present at her orchestrated re-enactment of the clipping of St Barnabus Church, Erdington, Birmingham in June 2016. As a potent symbol of identity and belonging, such a public art project sought to unite a disparate community. The resulting prints, produced as if they were postcards of the mythical town of Erdingtonia, a place where leave voters and EU migrants live hand in hand, commemorate the clipping of the church by combining Bohemian wedding celebrations with English rituals. As is often the case, the rituals that inspire Bušková's work have been absorbed into contemporary Czech society as playful and familiar practices, but their ostensible innocence belies an origin in pagan celebrations and a fundamental erotic charge. Bušková elaborates, ‘I put raw human sexuality in the spotlight. It is an unavoidable keystone of our existence bound up in our folklore and traditions’. Her work unravels chains of metaphors and metonymies yet remains open to multiple readings: ‘Like fairy-tales, my work holds beauty alongside the dark and sinister. Beyond the simple celebration of the patterns of our ancestors, I want to unashamedly unveil their taboos’.

In 2019 Bušková's work was included in Czech Routes to Britain, celebrating the contribution of Czechoslovak artists to British visual culture since 1900, at Ben Uri Gallery. She is currently working on a new public art project, Hidden Mothers, supported by Arts Council England, The European Investment Fund and the Czech Centre, London focusing on empowering and celebrating migrant and refugee mothers facing isolation and vulnerability in the UK today. Working with local communities in Birmingham and London to create a procession performance inspired by Czech and British Culture that runs from Kensington Park to the Czech Centre, the location of an installation featuring the façade of a Czech cottage which will function, in the artist’s own words, as ‘a statement of togetherness and of being home’. Bušková lives and works in Birmingham with her husband and young family.

Related books

  • Nicola Baird ed., Czech Route: Selected Czech Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections, (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2019)
  • Art in America, Volume 96, Issues 9-11 (Art Media AIA, 2008)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Northumbria University (student)
  • Royal College of Art (student)
  • Arts Council (Individual Artist Award, 2019, 2009)
  • Axis Future 50 (selected artist)
  • Chad Vale School, Birmingham (artist in residence)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Tereza Bušková: Wedding Rituals, David Roberts Art Foundation (online screening), (2020)
  • Czech Routes: Selected Czech Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2019)
  • The Mask, Hunter / Whitfield (2016)
  • Mother Art Prize, Mimosa House (2019)
  • Clipping The Church, Eastside Projects (2016)
  • Staging the Artwork, Article gallery (2015)
  • SALON, The Waterhall Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2015)
  • Reality Czech: the Czech Avant-Garde, Whitechapel Gallery (2015)
  • OPEN SOURCE Contemporary Arts Festival, Gillett Square (2015)
  • Points of View Video Festival, Centrala (2014)
  • Rituals are Tellers of Us, Newlyn Art Gallery (2013)
  • It's About Time, ASC Gallery (2013)
  • Coastal Currents, Hastings Old Town (2013)
  • Experiments in Ritual, Tereza Buskova & Matt Cowan, Beaconsfield (2012)
  • Coal & Steel, Candid Arts Trust Gallery (2012)
  • IMPRINT Experimental Feminist Art, Northern Charter Gallery (2012)
  • Ceremonies & Rituals - Solo 2 Film Screening, Stone Squid Experimental Art Space (2012)
  • Queering Traditions, Debut CUNTemporary Event, George's Tavern (2012)
  • Beyond the Screen, 12 Star Gallery (2011)
  • Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2011)
  • Last Friday Shorts, TAP (2011)
  • ‘400 women’, Shoreditch Town Hall (2010)
  • Lost In Translation, Riverside Studios (2010)
  • All That Remains…..The Teenagers Of Socialism, Waterside Project Space (2010)
  • murmurART, Selfridges (2009)
  • A Tradition I Do Not Mean To Break, Zabludowicz Collection (2009)
  • Rituals of Spring Equinox, Zabludowicz Collection (2009)
  • Bohemians – Videos by Bolf, Buskova & Seda, Spring Projects (2009)
  • Future50, Project Space Leeds (2008)
  • 20 Exhibition, Dazed & Confused Gallery (2008)
  • 700IS Reindeerland, MMU, Asager Gallery (2008)
  • Rituals, David Roberts Art Foundation (2008)
  • Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now, Barbican Art Gallery (2007)
  • Projektor, Season at Café Gallery Projects (2007)
  • Ritual Abuse, Exterior Boys Hall (2007)
  • Chase Charity Contemporary Art Exhibition (2007)
  • The Great Exhibition, RCA (2007)
  • Waygood Gallery (2004)
  Tereza Bušková
   
Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Tereza Bušková]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Tereza Bušková] in the Ben Uri Library