BORDER PROTECTION is comprised of essentially minimalist paintings that act as nodes in a larger conceptual network.
In the present body of work, background images are all of the human figure sourced from the web, which are then passed through a filter comparable to one used to censor pornography, or in the instance of news journalism, mask identity. It is also a process used in machine vision to detect edges and track movement. It points to a type of abstraction, but hinges on the figurative return. These images are then exported to Bradley’s printer as .pdf files, who then presses the images onto synthetic suede and synthetic silk, which are then stretched as per a normal painting. Once the works resemble a canvas, the works are then lightly sprayed along their vertical edges with spray paint in essentially one-shot gestures. Formally, the pictures are operative through a balance of polarities between figure/ground and hand/fabrication. Your eye constantly tries to discern forms from the background, which creates a pulsating sensation, while the ‘bars’ of spray bring your eye back to essentially the ‘concrete’ form of the work as an abstraction. It’s an incredibly poetic balance achieved through an absolute economy with zero surplus.
To give a brief background on the conceptual side of these works that provide a genealogy for the work, and possibly post-internet practice more generally, the Bauhaus, and in particularly Moholy-Nagy’s ordering a painting from a sign-writer over the telephone, effectively shifting the notion of the workshop or atelier to one of ‘out-sourcing’, is an incredibly important touchstone. The American sculptor David Smith’s silhouette experiments with spray paint in the 50s - basically when spray paint was invented, have also been an important reference point in the present body of work.
‘Border Protection’ in the context of the present work invokes a chain of associations - from the xenophobia surrounding refugees fleeing to Australia by boat, it also links in with the current debate surrounding the governments planned retention of ‘metadata’ and the murky intrusions into personal and private space by government and corporations. In an ouroborostic turn, 'border-protection’ returns to the edges of the paintings, and the interplay between the formal elements of the paintings, looping back between the fundamentals of pictorial construction.