Scale is an unavoidable issue in much of Bradley’s work. With his most expansive canvasses measuring more than 2m squared his paintings seem designed to confront.
This size combined with bold, flat colour makes for work which on first glance appears quite competitive. These are not however art billboards selling abstraction. The imagery is at odds with the rest of the package. Bloated, bulbous abstract forms don’t bring home a message; they do not tell you something you need to know. Instead Bradley’s structures compete with the slickness of their execution. They remain elusive. Graphic yet slippery they seem intentionally obscure; like diagrams that fail to explain.
Bradley manages to deal with painting’s recent history without compromising his own activity, he makes pictures which avoid the obvious; work that both intrigues and absorbs.
