Art and Heritage Online Database

Collection: Gray's School of Art Fine Art Collection
Object Type: painting
Artist/Maker: Buhat, Joseph
Date: 2019
Media/Materials: oil on canvas and sampaguita scent
Dimensions: overall: 79.2 cm x 91.4 cm
Awards: RGU Drawing and Painting Purchase Award
Classification: Drawing and Painting

Description:

Artist's statement:

My practice involves creating conversations between the viewer and the painted surface, by creating a visual language through the use of use of colour and bold brush strokes, enticing my audience to read into the composed image.
I am fascinated in the subject of Identity and how it is influenced in connection to the practice of Ritual. My work is based upon my Filipino heritage, exploring this cultural Identity in relation to rituals specific in the southeast Asian archipelago of the Philippines. Missing out on ritual rites and other ceremonies that take place in the Philippines, I am in limbo by having a dual identity. Heavily influenced by these practices, I reconstruct images by using the pictorial spaces of childhood memories and non-specific fictional or real experiences (that I may or may not have partaken in), making the design appear vague and dream-like. Purposely making the images more exotic, I have perhaps become an outsider of my own origins.

Object Number: ABDRG2019.22