Jyll Bradley’s practice encompasses photography, text and installation. Her work employs forms of commercial display to explore issues of identity; both highly personal and collective. In Bradley’s work the optimism and certainty suggested by objects such as light-boxes, banners and posters is subtly subverted to instead suggest mutability and flux. Bradley is interested in multiplicity and difference, evidenced both by the diversity of her work, as well as her creation of series and groups. Her installations have strong sculptural qualities, exploring the space images and texts create in the world, as well as asserting the notion that the meaning of work emerges through the viewer’s encounter with it. In addition to light-box pieces that draw more directly from her early engagement with minimalist forms, Bradley also makes work that responds to place; in particular worlds that are going through periods of self-reflection. Gardens and plants have been a recurring theme; spaces and things that signify growth but which are often battlefields for utopian aims. This has lead to significant residencies and commissions, such as her work within the Liverpool Botanical Collection as part of the city’s year as European Capital of Culture 2008.
Jyll Bradley is also interested in the relationship between literature and photographic image, for which she draws on voices, such as Marcel Proust’s, whose work has long been a source of inspiration. Bradley’s award-winning radio and artist book-works are known for their innovative use of language and rigorous engagement with lesser known narratives.
Jyll Bradley was born in 1966 in Folkestone, UK and studied at Goldsmith’s College and The Slade. Solo exhibitions include Naming Spaces Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, UK (2010) (touring to the Bluecoat, Liverpool UK) and The Botanic Garden the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK (2008). Recent group shows include the inaugural exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London, UK (2009) and Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2005). Jyll Bradley’s residencies include the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Artist’s Residency to the Galapagos Islands (2008) and a residency and exhibition at Museo D’Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia (2004). Bradley’s long term project within the historic Liverpool Botanical Collection formed one of the major commissions for Liverpool’s Year as European Capital of Culture 2008.
Jyll Bradley lives and works in London.