______________________________
Artist
_______________________________
Bradley (born Iran) is a sound artist whose works either use sound, or are silent pieces about sound. These address sound as language, music or noise. The works vary from compelling textile sculptures, to installations with electronics or digital media with live immersive performance. THe works seek to reposition the listener, to question our sense of self and our place within both society and in nature as a whole. Led by research and each specific location, Bradley’s work puts meaning over matter, employing materiality to convey the meaning. Research interests are history, ethics and identity. With a background in classical music Bradley obtained a B.A. in languages, literature and culture from University College London, and completed her post-graduate studies in music at the HP Slave academy in India. After studying journalism with City & Guilds, Bradley trained with digital sound and radiophonics at experimental sound-arts station Resonance104.4FM, where she composed for and played with the Resonance Radio Orchestra, producing experimental broadcasts both in the studio and on location, for example at MIMA, UK and Art Dubai, UAE, . Bradley taught Journalism and Podcasting at University of the Arts London (UAL), for the BBC and Westminster University and is now pursuing a practice-based doctorate in Sound Arts at the Centre for Research into Sound Art Practice at London College of Communication, UAL.
Bradley’s research is published in, for example, The Wire Magazine, Ibraaz online and The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art, while her “practice as research” manifests as performance, radiophonics, broadcast, sculpture and installations. The sculptures are totems, signage, found objects, textiles, machinery, electronics, speakers, domestic objects and more. Even those works without sound are about sound. Bradley’s core methodologies revolve around experimentalism, deep listening as ‘alert living’ and exercises in modes of communication and reception. These experiments are made via traditional forms of performance, in-person discussion and signage. Bradley’s live performances stage inter-plays between for example the body, architecture, and the dimensions of space (geography and scale), and history (linear and non linear time).
_______________________________
Collaborations
_______________________________
Bradley is a member of London noise-improv quartet Oscillatorial Binnage (2007-), whose album Agitations: Post-Electronic Noise released on Sub Rosa and performances include Cafe Oto, Merge Bankside Festival, Wellcome Trust, Tate Modern, and Void Gallery, N. Ireland. As sound art duo Bradley-Weaver (2013-), with sound artist and archivist Christopher John Weaver, Bradley researches space and history using acoustics and performance. Bradley-Weaver released a limited edition artist-vinyl record on The Vinyl Factory, UK, was made during a live installation of a full-size recording studio in the studio space, for their eponymous solo show at Tashkeel, Dubai and they have pieces in the Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Serkal Foundation, Lahore Biennial and Maraya Art Centre as well as private collections.
Bradley-Weaver’s commissions were exhibitions, performances, discursive events took place around the Persian Gulf and Levant; different Emirates in the UAE, Bahrain, Lebanon, Kuwait, Pakistan, and The Media Majlis, Northwestern University, Qatar with six permanent sound installations at the Al Leffayeh Wildlife Centre, Kalba Mountains, Sharjah.
Bradley-Weaver’s live, experimental music performances include Circular Landscapes an evolving series of performances commissioned by the Maraya Arts Centre, performed also at the Al Qasba Theatre Sharjah, while their electro-acoustic piece on the politics of eating and mealtimes in the UAE was performed at Al Serkal Avenue Dubai, Sikka Art Fair Dubai, The Mine, Dubai, Re-Use Kuwait and Beirut Arts Centre. Other broadcast projects took place at the Void Gallery for the European Capital City of Culture, Londonderry, N. Ireland, and more.
Together Bradley-Weaver produced an experimental radio series for the Sharjah Art Foundation on radio history in the UAE called “The Iron Speaks”, featured on Clocktower Radio (New York) and on BBC Radio 4 Xtra (UK) amongst other places.
_______________________________
Solo work
_______________________________
Broadcast
_______________________________
Bradley has performed live-improvised music and composed graphic scores for both solo performer and for ensembles. These have been performed publicly as live broadcasts and performances e.g. London Architecture Biennale, Gasworks, Conway Hall, Southbank Centre and as commissioned solo artist at for exmaple the V&A Museum and South London Gallery, MOCA, UK online.
Presenting and producing the weekly radio programme Six Pillars on West Asian, North African arts and culture Bradley has live broadcast on UK’s experimental arts-radio station Resonance104.4fm since 2005. A vehicle and platform for a major research project, Six Pillars resulted in a considerable audio archive, events such as an international residency with five Iranian creatives visiting the UK and fundraisers for human rights organisations such as Amnesty International. For seven years Bradley’s experimental dance music radio show Free Lab Radio, positioned the dancer as the selector, investigating dance music as an expressive culture outside of industry definitions.
Bradley’s pop-up radio arts projects, such as Falgoosh Radio at the largest art fair in West Asia, Art Dubai, and Jaou Tunis, Tunisia, also ran as broadcasts live from Bradley’s commissioned programming and experimental sound art performance at South London Gallery for Welcome to Iraq collaborating with local Iranian and Iraqi artists and musicians. Radiophonic artwork solo commissions include a broadcast sound walk with an imagined narrative for MonaFoma 2018 at The Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, and the live radio performance Petrosubjectivity for Radio Revolten, Halle, Germany.
Radiophonic works and research as broadcast were created by Bradley from the Frieze Art Fair ResonanceFM booth 2006-2010 inclusive, at the Serpentine Gallery for Ririkrit Tirivanija’s solo show and broadcast, and a UBS weekend at Tate Modern for Resonance104.4FM.
_______________________________
Sculpture:
_______________________________
Designed to provoke active listening, Bradley’s silent works about sound are sculptures as textiles, embroidery into found objects and lightboxes that invoke sound in the mind of the onlooker. Solo shows include The Mine Dubai, UAE, and group shows include Strange Cargo Gallery Folkestone, UK, The Art of Nuisance exhibition for Sisters of Perpetual Resistance London, for ResonanceFM at Raven Row London, The Great Imagining, Gavin Turk studios and Prince’s Galleries Shoreditch, London.
_______________________________
Installation
_______________________________
With an interest in materiality, Bradley uses electronics, sound objects and textiles to create works for solo and group shows to examine language, the act of memorising and perception within the context of space. Her work has appeared in group shows at Raven Row, London, Sight and Sound Festival, Folkestone and “wednesday” gallery (now Verdurin), London. In 2013 the leading body for sound art in the UK, Sound and Music commissioned Bradley with a 16mm film projector installation What Doesn’t Decay, 2013, employing projected home movies from 1970s Iran treated with crude oil, while anonymous interviews about 1970s design in US, UK and Iran play alongside on reel to reel tape.
_______________________________
Talks and Public Speaking
_______________________________
Bradley presented her research at academic conferences and arts symposiums Animal Utterances English Department, Bristol University, LOMA conference, Points of Listening and other guest lectures at the London College of Communications, University of the Arts London, Suden Radio, Villa Romana, Florence, Redbull Radio Basscamp Dubai, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, The American University Dubai, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi, Habib University, Karachi and New York University Abu Dhabi, Share Conference in its various iterations in Belgrade, Beirut, Tunisia and Croatia.
_______________________________
Composer and Improviser
_______________________________
Resident Artist
_______________________________
As duo Bradley-Weaver, residencies include the Lahore Biennial Foundation, Maraya Arts Centre, Sharjah, Al Serkal Avenue, Dubai, Sharjah Art Foundation, Beirut Arts Centre, the International Symposium of Electronica Art at Sheikh Zayed University, UAE, and Malja Studios, Bahrain. Solo Bradley has been resident at NYU in Abu Dhabi, and an Embedded Composer with by Sound and Music, UK’s leading body for sound art and composition, hosted at n.o.where studios (London).
_______________________________
DJing
_______________________________
Never a commericial DJ, mostly even a reluctant one, Bradley followed her experimental dance music radio series Free Lab Radio on Resonance104.4FM, with sets in venues from museums like The National Portrait Gallery, V&A Museum and ICA London to international music festivals such as Glastonbury, Exit Festival (Serbia) and Bestival (Isle of Wight). Bradley’s perferred setting is an arts crowd in non-monochrome venues, and she has played on moored boat installations (e.g Venice Biennial for the Danish Pavilion, Emporer Tito’s repurposed ship in Croatia, Radio Beirut in Lebanon), and specialist symposium events such as Cafe Oto’s Daphne Oram Symposium, Sharjah Biennial opening party, UAE, Art Dubai opening and London squat parties such as Area 21, Peckham.
On air Bradley has interviewed and hosted live guest DJ mixes from a gamut of great names in the arts such as: Charlie Dark, Acid Man, Mr Scruff, Egyptian Lover, Patrick Forge, Ceephax Acid Crew more.