JOE BRADLEY

In these new paintings, figurative elements—which Bradley had begun to develop in previous works—emerge as central compositional structures. ‘I have never really felt comfortable calling myself an abstract painter,’ says Bradley. ‘There have always been flashes of figuration in my work. For whatever reason, at this moment, I feel ready to let it all come to the surface.‘1 A group of horizontal paintings feature black contour lines that serve as scaffoldings for swaths of colour, floral blots of brushy paint, and scraped and stippled textural patches, which coalesce into hulking, animal-like forms that fill the surface of the support. Bradley builds up these forms until they achieve a loose balance between assembled wholes and disparate parts, establishing a dynamic tension in the work between cohesion and dissolution. In one painting, pinkish triangles read like teeth extending along a pronounced blue-and-white snout. Lines, shapes, and blots of colour momentarily read like a tail or paw but just as quickly come to stand as distinct visual components. This figural mass rests against a black ground dotted with white, suggesting a dark, star-filled sky.

[1] Quoted in Jayne O’Dwyer, ‘Here’s How Artist Joe Bradley Ended up Plucking His Show Title from a Foreign Children’s Book, Despite Not Speaking a Word of German,’ Cultured, 7 May 2024, accessed online.