Jyll Bradley

Jyll Bradley (born 1966, in Folkestone) is an artist based in London.

She makes installations, films, drawings and sculptures.

Bradley studied at Goldsmiths College (University of London) (1985–88) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1991–93).

During her early career, Bradley created photographic light-box installations, showing at The Showroom (London) in 1987, Riverside Studios (London) in 1988 and in British Art Show 3 at Hayward Gallery (London) in 1990.

As curator Caroline Collier has written, some of Bradley's early work "appeared to be singled out for attack by some reviewers", leading the artist to withdraw from the art world for a number of years.

During the 1990's Bradley also wrote for stage and performance, including 'The Fruit has Turned into Jam in the Fields' (1995) commissioned by Scarlett Theatre which played at The Young Vic and 'On the Playing Fields on her Rejection' (1996) at the Drill Hall.

Her drama 'Filet de Sole Veronique' (1997) won her the European Broadcasting Award for Best Script.

From 1998 to 2004, Bradley predominantly worked as a writer for BBC Radio, writing original radio dramas, making documentaries and dramatising novels with a focus on women's lives and stories.

In 1999 Bradley was the first person to adapt American writer Kate Chopin’s banned novel ‘The Awakening’ for radio marking the centenary of its publication.

'Just Plain Gardening', an all female comedy set in a fictitious girls gardening school was commissioned for two series for Woman's Hour in 2002.

The next public showing of her visual artwork was at Spacex (Exeter) in 2003.

Her play Girl, watching (2003), set in 1979, is about a fourteen-year-old female birdwatcher.

Bradley's work uses the formal aesthetic and material qualities of minimalism to explore identity and place.

Her work often brings together natural materials such as wood, with industrially produced materials such edge-lit plexiglass.

Many of her works draw from horticultural practices and structures (such as the glass house, the hop garden, the Dutch light, the espalier) as the basis for both its form and its exploration of the relationship between people and place.

Her large-scale public works have been used as sites for performance, reflecting Bradley's belief in "sculpture as a potent gathering place of people and ideas."

Reviewing a 2010 exhibition in Art Monthly, critic Gill Hedley wrote that Bradley's work "brings the very personal alongside genuinely public projects".

A review of a 2011 exhibition in The Guardian, by Skye Sherwin and Robert Clark, saw her work as "a series of celebrations of Proustian memory."

She has produced public realm projects such as 'Green/Light (for M.R.)' (2014) commissioned by the Folkestone Triennial, and 'Dutch Light' (2017) commissioned by Turner Contemporary (Margate).

She often works collaboratively, producing, for example, the film 'Pardes' (2020) with the Scottish Ensemble, the film 'Lean/In' (2021) with dance-artist and choreographer Michaela Cisarikova, with music by the Scottish rock band Cocteau Twins and 'Woman Holding a Balance' with fellow artist David Ward and composer Anna Clyne.

In 2021 Bradley also made her autobiographical film 'M.R'.

This work uses the visual frame of her Folkestone Triennial sculpture 'Green/Light (for M.R.)' as a way of exploring her story of adoption.