AS part of its annual “Piece of Mind” exhibition series featuring “amazing people with amazing stories” who use their art as a tool to achieve peace of mind, gallery@bcs is hosting a show by Stuart Anderson. 

Anderson, who has titled his exhibition “Bush Medicine,” says, “As a child my interest in finding the extraordinary in the ordinary was always there. Whether it is the bush or the rubbish tip, finding form and beauty in diverse environments has always been a major inspiration for my creativity.”

In my late teens, he explains, he became captivated by the photographic medium in all its forms, but the use of found objects for sculpture, and natural objects for bush art was something that has come in later years. “In many cases the peaks in creative energy coincided with the peaks, psychoses and troughs of my struggle with bipolar disorder.”

The photographs presented in the exhibition, he says, represent a difficult time of life, culminating in hospitalisation for bipolar disorder.

“The works themselves were created as a kind of self directed adjunct to the art therapy provided by the hospital. They span the hospital grounds to the adjacent bush reserve and were created with naturally occurring found objects. The primary theme of these pieces is very much about finding order and meaning or mystery in places that surrounded me.”

Anderson took the photographs on a phone-camera; all that was available to him at the time. Post production editing has sought to amplify how this experience felt through the bipolar eye.

“Bush Medicine,” Photography and Sculpture by Stuart Anderson, at gallery@bcs Belconnen Community Centre, Swanson Crt Belconnen, Mon to Fri, 9am-4:30pm, until November 2.