Ry David Bradley New Painting:

By Alana Kushnir

At first glance, the presence of painting in Bradley’s work might be a little challenging to notice. There’s no canvas or paper, no pigments applied by human hand with a bristle brush or a palette knife. Instead, there are digital images printed on synthetic suede. Tapestries are made with a Jacquard weaving machine. And still, every single work of his is about painting—its radical permanence, romantic sensibilities and its continuing pre-eminence in the Western art historical canon.

Many of us have a naïve faith in new forms of technology. We’re always hungry for the latest form of digital storage and the next type of intelligent tools that can make our lives just that little bit easier. But Bradley wants to remind us that it is painting that has stood the test of time. We can still see 17,000-year-old Aboriginal rock art paintings made using iron oxide ochres in the northern Kimberley, Michaelangelo’s sixteenth century frescoes at the Sistine Chapel and Hokusai’s ‘the Great Wave’ ink and colour print on paper from the nineteenth century at The Met in New York. For his graduate show at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012, Bradley created a series of playful, bright digital images printed on aluminium titled Each Copy May Perish Individually. Each work was paired with an everyday object counterpart—a tote bag, a cap, a USB—on which was the same digital image was printed or stored on. To this day, this experimental sensibility continues in Bradley’s work.

Back in the early days of Instagram, there was a moment in time before an image loaded in its full glory. That anticipative blur became the subject of Bradley’s experiments with printing digital images on synthetic suede and silk. Shows like Access All Areas in Los Angeles, 2015, Painting More Painting at ACCA in Melbourne, 2016 and Room with a View in New York, 2017 were hallmarks of this period of his practice. Soft, shadow-like forms in vibrant colours acted like new age Rorscharch Inkblot Tests—Bradley was encouraging us to question our ability to make sense of the tech-obsessed world around us.

The year 2018 marked the start of another creative leap for Bradley. He began to trial a weaving technique for his digital images using a Jacquard loom—a 19th century French invention which can create intricate patterns and which kickstarted the automation of textile production. The Jacquard system uses a series of punched cards that encode which thread should be used where. It is considered an important precursor to modern computing—a fact not lost on Bradley. Using a pointillist design ala Seurat and Signac, the subjects of Bradley’s tapestry works are only recognised when standing back and looking from a distance.

At shows such as Transmission at Sullivan+Strumpf in Sydney, 2020, Once Twice in New York, 2021 and in Stockholm, 2021, Bradley fine-tunes this weaving process as well as his image-making tools. He uses his own custom-made digital brushes, which are designed to mimic hand-held bristle brushes. Images of animals and humans are painted by the artist using his iPad screen—he stretches and exaggerates their facial features, and adds gigantic tear drops that spill out of their eyes. There’s more than a touch of existential sadness in these faces.

Bradley’s thirst to evolve his ideas and techniques is never satiated. ‘I like to push forward and try new things while I am at this stage of my career, rather than just do the same thing over and over again’. So, we can reflect on this past decade of his work as a series of necessary experiments— in new forms of painting.

RY DAVID BRADLEY, 27 APR – 18 MAY 2023, S+S MELBOURNE

EMAIL ART@SULLIVANSTRUMPF.COM TO REQUEST A PREVIEW