Jyll Bradley » Works

For Untitled, Miami Beach Jyll Bradley created ‘Within a Budding Grove’ her first solo presentation of work in the U.S. The installation was subsequently awarded Best Booth at the fair, judged by Stephanie Seidel, Curator, ICA Miami.

Bradley’s installation evoked her teenage bedroom and included photographs, sculptures and a bespoke wallpaper work which created a sense of space and place. Titled after the second volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, ‘Within a Budding Grove’ recalled the increasing sense of self-awareness of Proust’s protagonist during his adolescence. Bradley took us on her own journey of self-discovery through the act of looking back and unearthing previously unseen photographic work from her archive.

Bradley’s 30-year career examines notions of identity, urbanity, light, nature, queerness and community through a minimalist aesthetic. A series of large-scale self-portrait photographs, taken in her bedroom when Bradley was a student in London in the 1980s and now printed at the artist’s height, were presented alongside works from the Graft and Scions series of wall-based sculptures. The dimensions of the Graft sculptures also reflect the height of the artist, forming a further representation of Bradley. ‘Within a Budding Grove’ explored ‘queering minimalism’, a term Bradley uses to describe how abstraction and minimalism can embody coded personal narratives and experiences.

Bradley’s wallpaper work was created from her complex hand-drawn patterns that reference the hop gardens of her childhood landscape. These traced a personal map across the wall with the flashes of yellow representing the fractured sun as it illuminated her room. Hung upon this wallpaper, Bradley’s photographic self-portraits examined what it was to be a young queer female, balancing the need to be seen with the instinct to hide away. Smaller self-portraits saw her play with the scale of her work exploring how memory shapes the way in which we view our experiences as we seek to recall the past.

The formal structures of her Graft sculptures (2023) reflect the agricultural landscape experienced by the artist around her childhood home of Kent, which was peppered with hop gardens. Created using Bradley’s signature materials of timber and colourful plexiglass, the Grafts can also be seen to echo the line of her spine, mirroring her own height. The play of light that Bradley witnessed as it was filtered through the glass greenhouse of the familial garden inspired her to experiment with light as a medium in her practice. The use of fluorescent live edge plexiglass in her sculptures allows light to activate her work, the viewer experiencing it anew as they move around the piece.

Bradley also introduced poetry to her sculptural forms for the first time through Scions. This series reflects on her personal archive and literary voice. Combing through early sketchpads, Bradley rediscovered lines of her poetry which she etched into the plexiglass, projecting the words out onto the viewer’s environment.

Within a Budding Grove raised questions about how we curate our personal archives and how we approach memories with new understanding brought on by the passing of time.

Coloured ‘tracedown’ carbon paper hot-mounted onto painted beech plywood board.

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.

‘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.’

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.

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.

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.

Spray paint & photocopy on coloured carbon paper hot mounted on aluminium 31 x 22 x 4 cm. Bespoke ash wood frames.

Fingers is a new family of works on paper that juxtapose feelings of uncertainty with a desire for direction. These drawings continue my fascination with the process, structure and metaphor associated with growing hops. Fingers draw their title and form from the wind-vanes of the oasthouses which were part of my childhood landscape. Traditionally fingers have distinctive motifs – such as arrows and circles – which are specific to place. Sailing high above the countryside and subject to changing eddies, I see fingers as strange signposts to both direction and flux.

For these drawings I researched historic finger motifs and rendered them – or fractals of them – as computer generated graphic designs. I then prepared the grounds. I use coloured carbon paper, a material connecting me to my father who used it when writing poetry. The paper is folded, stripped back and then spray-painted creating layers of opacity and translucency. Then the ‘finger’ designs are photocopied onto the ground. As a result, Fingers have a hand-made quality with boldness of colour and echo of dynamic forward looking 1960’s design, yet a fragility of texture and surface. The simple frames are unglazed to create immediacy between viewer and artwork. Fingers were developed through Brexit and lockdown, times of personal and global uncertainty of direction.

Commissioned by Kaunas 2022, European Capital of Culture. A project of Kaunas ‘Memory Office’ and the ‘City Telling Festival’ in partnership with Kaunas Jewish Community

Sculptural installation and guided tour. Multiple sites across the city of Kaunas.

Fluorescent live-edge Plexiglas, mirrored steel, wood.
Each sculpture 20cm (L) x3cm (W) x5cm(D)

Threshold is a sculpture project and guided tour inspired by the mezuzah, a small ritual object commonly fixed to the doorways of Jewish homes and businesses. A mezuzah contains a sacred scroll and marks the human passage between private/sacred and public/secular space. It is a mark of spiritual connection and belonging and a visual reminder to uphold good values in life. Kaunas was once home to a large Jewish population of 40,000 and the mezuzah was a common sight on city buildings. Since the Holocaust the mezuzah has disappeared without trace – along with the people. The Threshold project re-introduces the language of mezuzah to Kaunas streets. I have designed a small sculpture echoing the mezuzah form but with the scroll replaced by a mirror, inviting reflection for all. City buildings once connected to Jewish life were researched with local collaborator Karina Zidokaite and their current residents and businesses invited to host a Threshold sculpture at their doorway. Thus, each Threshold represents a conversation about the Jewish people who once lived or worked there. It is only through the hosts’ participation that the project is made possible. Made from traditional and futuristic materials each Threshold holds a light for a former Jewish resident whilst also considering the universal gift of ‘mezuzah’ – a challenge to be mindful of our values and behaviour both in public and private.

‘Threshold takes a specific form from a particular historic context and interprets it into the contemporary moment in a way that gathers general and universal relevance. Jyll Bradley’s artwork may appear modest but it contains the considerable ambition to project the experience of a piece of Kaunas’ past in a way that could influence Europe’s future history.’

Threshold was launched with a guided tour of the buildings and their human stories written by myself and Karina Zidokaite. This is now available as a map and audio guide:

Fluorescent live-edge Plexiglas, aluminium Unistrut, pine wood.
4m(h) x 5m(d) x 22m(l) Depth dimensions vary across the work.

The Hop connects the urban landscape of the South Bank to the rural hop gardens of Kent with a vibrant, interactive pavilion. Through its materiality the work creates brilliant light reflections and projects a spectrum of colours onto the Hayward’s iconic Brutalist architecture.

The Hop is inspired by the history of thousands of working-class families from Lambeth bringing in the hop harvest – or ‘going hopping’ – which was viewed by some as a ‘working holiday’. Every year until the 1960s, these Londoners escaped the pollution of the city for the green hop gardens of Kent.

The Hop echoes the geometry of Kent’s unique hop growing structures designed to expose the crop to the maximum amount of sunlight. The work reaches outwards and upwards, evoking a gathering of people with outstretched arms and considers the physical and spiritual work needed to grow something, whether a crop or a community.

The Hop reflects my life. I grew up in the Kentish countryside and have spent all my adult years in Bermondsey where I first heard the ‘hopping’ stories from neighbours. The work also speaks to the site of the post-war Festival of Britain with its creative, futuristic pavilions – spaces for both gathering and contemplation.

An exciting programme of commissioned poetry, sound art and dance pieces are being created in response to The Hop. An ‘In Conversation’ event with myself and Director of Hayward Gallery, Ralph Rugoff, will take place on 21 September.

All images: Thierry Bal, 2022

Set design commissioned for new touring dance work by Michaela Cisarikova Dance Company.

Fish Out of Water is a fresh outdoor dance performance using hip hop, interactive sculptures & responsive music to explore themes of belonging, otherness, displacement & migrancy.

The set is a family of dynamic sculptures. Our design responds to the core idea that life challenges can be an opportunity for growth. We used the language of roofs (ideas of home), the game Snakes and Ladders and structures from obstacle courses to create physical playfulness and push-back for the dancers. The pairing of light reactive colourful Plexiglas suggests the human creativity it takes to turn difficulties into possibilities. At the end of the show the sculptures join to become a house into which young people are invited. The set was upcycled from a former sculpture of mine – Dutch/Light (2017)

Fish Out of Water is Co-commissioned by Applause and The Marlowe, with support of SELEP Ltd as a part of Catalyst For Culture and supported by Arts Council England.

Reveal is the result of a long-term collaboration between myself, Anna Clyne and Jane Atkins. In the film Atkins performs music composed especially for my sculpture installation Pardes at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. In the film, performer and sculpture are revealed through the journey of the music, in turn revealing the space and acoustics of the newly renovated Fruitmarket warehouse. Atkins describes the film as an embrace of ‘simplicity and complexity, angularity and softness, isolation and inclusion, dark and light.’

Myself, Clyne and Atkins were first brought together in 2020 by Scottish Ensemble to make a digital lockdown work. At the time, my Pardes commission at the Fruitmarket had been postponed due to the pandemic so I decided instead to make a model of the sculpture by hand at my studio in London. This formed the basis for a film, with music composed remotely by Clyne at her base in upstate New York and recorded by Atkins at her Edinburgh home. Reveal thus also represents the full realisation of Pardes and the collaboration between myself, Atkins and Clyne.