Jyll Bradley » Works

Written, Directed and Produced by Jyll Bradley
Music composed by Linda Buckley
Sound design by Jonquil Panting
Edited by Will Martin
Filmed by Emma Dalesman
Sound Recording by Adam Gutch
Voices – M.R.: Claire Rushbrook; J: Jyll Bradley

Filmed with kind permission of the Trustees of Kew.
Generously supported by David Maclean

The Meeting is the second in Jyll Bradley’s trilogy of films exploring her experience of childhood adoption. Whilst her first film M.R. (2021) explored the search for her birth mother in 1991, The Meeting (2025) unpacks their first meeting in 1992 in the Palm House, Kew Gardens, the location Bradley chose for this – and where the film is shot.

As with M.R., The Meeting uses ideas of light, structure and transparency to express the feeling of being ‘inside and outside’ at the same time, which is how Bradley describes her adoption experience. Both films intersect this with queerness and the youthful forming of creative identity. The Meeting paints a portrait of the reunion of birth mother and daughter and of the vast glasshouse which holds their story. Through the lush Eden-like tropical vegetation and sweeping arches two voices emerge revealing a story of loss, memory and societal pressure. The only figures seen are the gardeners in the background, silent witnesses to the event, quietly tending the space.

Running and Returning is the first comprehensive monograph of internationally acclaimed artist Jyll Bradley, whose diverse practice spans over four decades and encompasses photography, film, writing, performance, sculpture and large-scale public installations. A pioneer of adopting commercial lightbox technology in art, Bradley is renowned for her use of minimalist, industrial forms as spaces for exploring identity, spirituality and community. Her ambitious public realm artworks, such as Green/Light (for M.R.) (Folkestone Triennial), Dutch/Light (Turner Contemporary) and The Hop (Hayward Gallery), reflect her innovative approach to sculpture as a potent gathering place of people and ideas.

This richly illustrated book features some of the most exciting voices in contemporary art and literature exploring every aspect of Bradley’s multifaceted practice. Running and Returning will provide a vital resource for those familiar with Bradley’s work, while introducing her to new audiences in an accessible, engaging and imaginative way.

Authors and essayists include: Andrew Renton (Professor of Curating at Goldsmiths College), Nicoletta Lambertucci (Curator of British Art, Tate), Fatos Ustek (Curator of Frieze Sculpture), Ralph Rugoff (Director, Hayward Gallery).

Running and Returning is a major survey show of Jyll Bradley’s rich career over 35 years of practice. Known for her large-scale public commissions such as The Hop (Hayward Gallery, 2022) and Green/Light (for M.R.) for the 2014 Folkestone Triennial, Running and Returning presents a new film and sculptural installations alongside works of historic significance. Seen together for the first time the exhibition reveals an intimate path of re-discovery and an invitation by the artist to enter her world. Bradley’s work examines identity, urbanity, queerness and community through a minimalist aesthetic, a process she calls ‘queering minimalism.’ Light as both material and metaphor runs throughout her work in the exhibition which includes her recent award-winning photographic self-portrait installation Within a Budding Grove, expanded from its original showing in Miami, U.S. Bradley was a pioneer of light box technology and the first British artist to use the light box. Her early light box installations are also on show in Running and Returning for the first time in 15 years.

A fully illustrated monograph, Running and Returning is published by Kulturalis to time with the exhibition. This features leading writers and thinkers including Andrew Renton (Professor of Curating at Goldsmiths College), Nicoletta Lambertucci (Curator of British Art, Tate), Fatos Ustek (Curator of Frieze Sculpture), Ralph Rugoff (Director, Hayward Gallery).

Renowned documentary film-maker Jared Schiller has made a new film introducing Bradley and her work:

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: