Materiality Performed | Braddon Snape

Braddon Snape, Single fold hung n strung, 2016. Welded and inflated stainless steel with ratchet strap, 180 x 325 x 60cm.

Newcastle based artist Braddon Snape has developed a practice over 20 years that encompasses sculpture and installation in a diverse range of media. Highlights include participation in Sculpture by the Sea seven times, a finalist in the McClelland Sculpture Survey and Award, the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, ISF Korea and numerous significant awards and Public Art commissions that demonstrate a thorough understanding of materiality and site.

Braddon has earned a reputation for an astute understanding and sensitivity to materials that reveal a minimal aesthetic equally rich in content. He has shown to be proficient when employing any chosen material or method. This is evident in his most recent work that interrogates a dangerously exciting and innovative method of inflating steel. This performative process developed whilst researching for a PhD at The University of Newcastle gives his work a renewed freedom, where it reveals a delicate dialogue between control and chance that has been aptly described as Action Sculpture.

For this major exhibition at MRAG titled Materiality Performed Braddon will share the most recent results of his extraordinary research. The aesthetic and conceptual manifestation of this inflated steel work is in direct response to the complete performance of the inflation process, exploiting the material properties of the steel, the air hoses, and the immaterial – the invisible air that forms it.

Braddon Snape is represented by Spot 81, Sydney

3 September – 6 November 2016