Nestled away in a quiet backstreet removed from London’s vibrant Soho is Vardaxoglou Gallery. Housing the first London exhibition by Midlands-based painter Betsy Bradley, the crisp pops of neon that zing and zap across her work appeared to have bounced over from the adjacent streets; having gently caught some respite within this small, brilliant white, tranquil space, just a moment’s throw from the capital’s party quarter.
Bang! The first painting in Betsy Bradley’s latest exhibition erupts in a fit of pigment and gesticulative passion. Swathes of mauve dance and swish in the foreground, as an explosive blur of spray paint and pencil jostles beneath it.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. Move your eye across the room to a smaller work, where canvas has been gnawed away by a spindly object, leaving sharp flecks of teal and cobalt blue, all of which appear to bleed out into the fabric the closer you approach it.
To summarise Bradley’s work is to secularise something that exists beyond vocabulary. Amongst the waves of pastel, lashes of neon and layering of organza is a visual language that exists beyond the medium itself. Reading between the lines is as important as conversing with the shapes and colours themselves here, for Bradley’s work is as much about the absence of matter as it is the inclusion of it.
The first piece, Juggernaut, is an excellent example of this, both busy with movement, but paired back in its application of pigment – the raw canvas takes up almost as much space as the paint. Through both motion, lack and scale, our eyes are drawn to focus on details that we would so often ignore in art – such as the delicate imprint of the tools used to apply colour (Bradley has recently moved away from using brushes), to the varied thickness of paint. In turn, our mind flits between both the painting in front of us and the imagining of Bradley at work, as each lash and swish takes us back to the very inception of the piece itself; enabling us to sense the connection between artist and artwork, tool and medium.
In Markus Gabriel’s ‘The Power of Art’ he uses Rodin’s Le Pensure as an example of an artwork that exists beyond the sculpture itself – in this instance it also constitutes the relationship that the viewer shares with the work. Adopting this approach, our envisioning of the artist at play may therefore also be considered as much a part of the artwork as the physical work itself. The performance of making is therefore as important as the painting stood before us, meaning it is potentially appropriate to view Bradley as a performance artist who just so happens to paint.
Causing us to reflect on this practice has led to a physical group of pieces that offer us a moment for meditation. Whilst excessive movement presents itself within each work, this simple act of imagining takes us away from the real world, Soho appears to be many miles away. Why not take the opportunity to meet with these works first hand and offer yourself the chance to breathe? With one institutional show under her belt, and now a London debut, Betsy Bradley’s name is on the rise. Catch her work while you can, it is anything but static.
Betsy Bradley, through to 1st October, Vardaxoglou Gallery
About the artist
Betsy Bradley (b. Bath, UK, 1992) lives and works in the Midlands, UK. She studied for a BA in Painting at University of Brighton (2015); MA in Fine Art at Birmingham School of Art (2018); and enrolled on the Turps Correspondence Course, London (2019).
Bradley’s first London solo exhibition will be held at Vardaxoglou, London (2022). A major recent solo exhibition dedicated to her work was staged at IKON Gallery, Birmingham (2022). Recent group exhibitions include: New Art West Midlands/Coventry Biennial, Coventry, UK (2019); Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK (2019); Quad, Derby, UK (2019); International Project Space, Birmingham City University, UK (2019); New Art from Birmingham, IKON at Medicine Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2019); International Project Space, Birmingham City University, UK (2018); Gallery Be, Nagoya, Japan (2015, 2016); Community Arts Centre, Brighton, UK (2013). She has completed residencies at Eastside Projects (2019); Grand Union Gallery Residency (2018); Royal Drawing School Dumfries House Residency, Scotland (2018); Nagoya University of Arts Residency (2014).
