Coloured ‘tracedown’ carbon paper hot-mounted onto painted beech plywood board.
Bespoke designed frame with painted fluorescent back board.
30cm, 60cm, 90cm square
In Umbrella Work (2023), a suite of new drawings on coloured carbon paper based on the mesmerising geometry of the hop gardens of Bradley’s childhood landscape. Bradley sees the process of making these works as a form of meditation in which she painstakingly repeats complex linear patterns across blue carbon paper, thus transferring them onto the painted board beneath. The carbon paper is then fixed and hot mounted to the board. These intricate works have the character of an architectural blueprint or a personal DNA, the patterns of life that shape and form us.
Solo exhibition at Pi Artworks, London
Curated by Debbie Meniru
20 – 30 September
‘Jyll Bradley’s exhibition at Pi Artworks is a pitch-perfect triumph. You might think of it all as self-portraiture, as literal self-reflection. The materials, the scale and the body negotiating its space.’
Andrew Renton, Professor of Curating, Goldsmith’s College.
Within a Budding Grove takes its title from the second volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which follows the protagonist’s adolescence and his increasing sense of self-awareness. As a teenager, Jyll Bradley spent a lot of time sitting in her family’s greenhouse in rural Kent observing the play between sunlight and glass, a visual language that has remained integral to her work since the 1980s. This exhibition of works across sculpture, photography, film and drawing reflects central themes in Bradley’s work: identity, light and place through a process she describes as ‘queering minimalism.’
Recent, light-reactive sculptures titled Grafts, using her signature fluorescent edge lit Plexiglas titled Grafts (2023) – which share the dimensions of Bradley’s height and which she sees as self-portraits – hang beside hitherto unseen photographic self-portraits taken in the late 1980’s. These highly personal images hint at her desire as a young queer woman to be seen and understood but also to hide away, obscuring her face from the camera and turning to abstraction in her art as a way to express the strange and unexpected.
In Umbrella Work (2023), a series of new drawings based on the mesmerising geometry of the hop gardens of Bradley’s childhood landscape she repeats complex linear patterns across blue carbon paper. These intricate works have the character of an architectural blueprint or a personal DNA, the patterns of life that shape and form us.
The exhibition also includes Bradley’s first film Brigitte (2017). Here, through the passage of the sun and time-lapse photography she captures a ‘day in the life’ of one of her public sculptures on its wall-mounted home beside a railway line in Folkestone, Kent.
Text by Curator Debbie Meniru:
Press release:
Performance programme curated by Jyll Bradley
Presented by Pi Artworks, London
Generously supported by VADA
After a highly successful year at the Hayward Gallery, Bradley is bringing the spirit of her acclaimed work, The Hop to Frieze Sculpture. For this, she is transforming a section of The Regent’s Park into The Hop Square, evoking the themes and vivacity of the work – as both sculpture and place – as a catalyst for exciting performance and activation.
Bradley’s programme draws upon creative relationships developed in response to The Hop whilst at the Hayward. These include Spoken Word Poetry by Abstract Benna, Poet Laureate of Lambeth and Hopping, a dance work by MCDC set to original music score by Sound Artist Emily Peasgood.
An Open Call encourages creatives to suggest projects in response to The Hop.
To celebrate the re-homing of The Hop sculpture to Poplar, East London in 2024, a special dance commission will be premiered at the closing day of The Hop Square and Frieze Sculpture on 29 October. This collaboration – devised with leading choreographer Adesola Akinleye – is between Spotlight, an award-winning Creative Youth Hub based in Poplar, and their dance partners – One Youth Dance, IMD Legion and Blink Dance Theatre.
Frieze Sculpture curator Fatoş Üstek talks to artists Jyll Bradley, Temitayo Ogunbiyi and Holly Stevenson about their works on show in The Regent’s Park and the idea of performance in sculpture.
This new film by Will Martin, scripted and narrated by myself celebrates the year long life of The Hop, my Hayward Gallery Commission. The film explores my thoughts about sculpture as a gathering place and shows the many and various creative activations that arose through the work.
Platform A Gallery, Middlesborough Railway Station
28 September to 9 November
I’m delighted to be exhibiting in this group show curated by Eric Butcher. Artists include Morrissey and Hancock, David Batchelor, Rana Begum, Andy Harper, Eleanor Wood.
Curated by Jyll Bradley
Presented by Pi Artworks
Frieze Sculpture, London
19 September to 29 October
Solo exhibition at Pi Artworks, London
20-30 September
This exhibition of new sculptures, photographs, drawings and film was curated by Debbie Meniru.
Long-time collaborator Will Martin has made a new film celebrating the year long life of The Hop at the Hayward Gallery. The film is written and narrated by myself and features many of the creatives who were inspired by The Hop.
My work Graft 2 (Green and Blue) has been acquired by the Arts Council Collection. Founded in 1946, this prestigious collection is the most widely circulated national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art.