gallery elena shchukina Katusha Bull · Katusha Bull Katusha Ostroumoff Bull (b.1951) was born in Hong Kong where she lived until the age of 19, when she moved to Australia to study

gallery elena shchukina

Katusha Bull

Katusha Ostroumoff Bull (b.1951) was born in Hong Kong where she lived until the age of

19, when she moved to Australia to study nursing. In 1998 she moved to the UK and

studied portraiture and figurative sculpture at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, Chelsea,

and she has been working as a sculptor full time since graduating in 2002.

Her creative achievements were formally recognised in 2005, when she was made an

Associate of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. Recently, Bull was elected a member of

the Society of Designer Craftsmen. Her work can be found in many collections in the UK,

USA, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Norway and India.

Katusha Bull creates sculpture to live with. Each piece best rewards those who commit to a

close, ongoing relationship with it, observing it on a day-to-day basis. Only then can a

viewer fully understand how her works change with the endlessly changing lights of

different times of day, seasons and even locations, creating subtly shifting aesthetic and

emotional effects on a personal, intimate scale.

Being so purely abstract, her art is open for all to enjoy. Each piece means nothing less, and

nothing more, than what it is. She makes no exclusive cultural or philosophical references,

and requires no specialist sculptural knowledge of her audience. Rather, each work explores

the directly present formal properties of the individual stone being worked on, and of the

wider visual world that we all live in.

Those formal properties are brought out in stone through Bull’s uniquely iconoclastic

carving style. Her sculptural training and experience has helped her become both a

confident reinventor of existing techniques, and a bold explorer of new ways of working. At

10 Lees Place Mayfair London W1K 6LL +44 (0)20 7499 6019 [email protected] galleryelenashchukina.com

the moment, she works mostly with alabaster, but has also worked in marble, calcite and

onyx. Her suppliers know her work well, and select stones that they know she will find

inspiring from a variety of worldwide sources.

Her aesthetic is defined in particular by her fascination with the endlessly paradoxical

Möbius loop, and related natural curls, twists and waves. This fascination stems from a

deep awareness of, and sensitivity to, the constant flow of the natural world in general. Her

sculptures embody this endless, universal movement, and – by capturing it on such an

intimate scale – help those of us lucky enough to live with them both understand, and

explore, its perpetual presence in us all.

Selected Recent Exhibitions:

2015 Masterpiece Art Fair, Royal Hospital Chelsea, London

2014 ‘Buy or Bid Sale,’ Christie’s South Kensington, London

2014 ‘Works from the 70s and 80s,’ Gallery Elena Shchukina, London

2014 ‘On Form’ Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire

2014 ‘Autumn Bliss,’ Gallery Elena Shchukina, London

2013 Parallax Art Fair, Chelsea Town Hall

2013 ‘On Form,’ St Pancras Church and Crypt, London

2012 ‘On Form,’ Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire

2012 Royal College of Art

2011 Affordable Art Fair Battersea, London

2011 Art London, Chelsea, London

2011 Christie’s, solo exhibition, South Kensington

2011 20/21 International Art Fair, RCA London

2010 20/21 International Art Fair, RCA, London

2009 Thompson’s Gallery, solo exhibition, London

2009 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, London

2009 ‘Artists of Fame & Promise,’ Beaux Arts Bath, Somerset

2008 Newby Hall Contemporary Sculpture Show, Yorkshire