In his first major exhibition in Melbourne, and debut exhibition with James Makin Gallery, Braddon Snape further interrogates his ‘Act of Suppression’ series in Inexplicit Content. This body of sculptural work features Snape’s extraordinary process of air inflated steel. During the somewhat organic act of inflation, resistant or suppressing forces are at play: clamps feature as suppressors in the act, inhibiting inflation, suppressing potential, creating clefts and folds. .
As an artist in times of social and environmental unrest, both domestically and internationally, Snape constantly feels the pressure to produce work that speaks directly to these concerns. However, the artist chooses to resist such explicit engagement – not because he wants to ignore such issues, but because he believes such direct communication is not necessary in the context of his work. For the artist, it is important that his work approach his current world climate in a way that permits nuance and evokes important conversation. Inexplicit.
Spending time, looking closely at Snape’s work, its inflations and suppressions, one is free to investigate the associations it offers to our current times. For the viewer, it may speak to a particular issue, or many issues, and you may find it speaks to other things – concurrently. Through method, matter, meaning, and materiality, the work acknowledges what has come before in the realm of art, whilst joining the conversation that is contemporary art and its power for commentary. Everything in Snape’s world, all that he experiences, all that he contemplates, all that he ruminates on, and all that he processes, informs his work. A continuation of Snape’s The Act of Suppression series, Inexplicit Content aims to speak in the universal language of art to approach the act of making, the social, political, psychological and the very personal.
Dr Braddon Snape is a nationally recognised Newcastle (Australia) based artist who specialises in three-dimensional practice including large-scale public artworks. Over the past 27 years Snape has developed a practice utilising a diverse range of media that now encompasses sculpture, installation, video, and performance, earning Snape a reputation for conceptually rich works revealed through a minimal aesthetic and an astute understanding and sensitivity to materials, media, and site. His current practice interrogates a dangerously exciting and new method of inflating steel. This performative process developed whilst researching for his PhD gives Snape’s work a renewed freedom, where it reveals a delicate dialogue between control and chance that has been aptly described as Action Sculpture. Snape’s recent addition of crafted light has added another dimension to his ever-evolving practice.
Highlights include: Winner of the Lake Prize 2022; Blake Prize finalist 2022; Things are not as they appear (Smoke and Mirrors), Nanda Hobbs Sydney and Grafton Regional Gallery 2021; An Act of Restraint, Nanda Hobbs Sydney 2019; Internal Pressure, The LockUp Contemporary Art Space, Newcastle 2019; Clouds Gathering, Public artwork commissioned by Maitland City Council for The Riverlink Building 2018; International Sculpture Festa 2012, Seoul, South Korea; Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize Finalist 2009; McClelland Sculpture Survey Award Finalist 2007.
