Jacqueline Bradley

About the work

In Precedent, a linear, articulated structure of fabric, timber, cement and brass moves along the busy pathways around Lake Burley Griffin. This malleable and mobile structure makes its slow, awkward journey between the bridges, aided by the iterative movements of two performers. Borrowing from the language of fitness training regimes, these performers climb the work along the pathways in tandem, each pushing the other to advance the piece a little further along the thoroughfare.

Precedent relies on incremental changes in the performer’s repetitive movements in order for the sculptural structure to travel from place to place. The sculpture echoes the formal qualities of the architecture between the bridges, the stand of flag poles and the curve of the concrete path. The lake is a site is heavy with histories built up over time, and changed through slow, deliberate movement. Meaningful change is not fast; it is performed over years through accrual of actions made collectively and individually. Precedent explores these ideas through embodied, temporal practice, adaptive structures and leg warmers.

Photographed by Brenton McGeachie

About the artist

Jacqueline Bradley is an artist concerned with bodily relationships to the outdoors. Through her wearable and sculptural constructions, she explores the ways in which clothing and equipment both reflect and influence an experience of a landscape. Bradley has exhibited and collaborated with artists and curators in Australia and internationally, and worked with national parks staff and landscape architects on projects regarding performance in the landscape in Canada and Australia. In recent years, she has developed projects for the National Portrait Gallery, the Drill Hall Gallery and the South Australian touring exhibition I’m a feminist, but… In early 2019 Jacqueline was funded by Arts ACT and the Australian Embassy in Washington to exhibit works from her PhD series Am I doing this right? and to develop and construct a large artwork on at the Embassy Gallery in Washington. Her work was recently discussed in Columbia Universities Climates: Architecture and the Planetary Imaginary, and she is currently working on a new project for the Unsolicited Proposals Unit, curated by Eleanor Scicchitano. She works from her backyard studio and lectures at the National Art School.