About

FARI BRADLEY

Bradley (b. Iran) is an artist engaging with listening, language and the environment.  Her research-based practice spans the mediums of performance, broadcast, installation and sculpture. Core methodologies revolve around experimentalism, deep listening and exercises in modes of communication and reception.
Bradley’s works employ treated found objects, textiles and electronics. Her live performances stage interplays between architecture, public space and history, provoking and repositioning the listener, questioning our sense of self and our place within both society and nature.
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With a history of live, broadcast and prerecorded collaborations, Bradley is a member of London noise-improv quartet Oscillatorial Binnage 2013-present, recently releasing the album Agitations: Post-Electronic Noise on Sub Rosa). With sound art duo Bradley-Weaver, working with sound artist and archivist Christopher John Weaver in UK and the Middle East since 2013, Bradley released a limited edition artist-vinyl record, Systems for a Score with The Vinyl Factory, UK, made during a live-in installation for their eponymous solo show at Tashkeel (Dubai), 2014.
Living and working around the Persian Gulf, (different Emirates in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Pakistan), Bradley had solo shows and a series of Bradley-Weaver sound art exhibitions and projects. Beyond that, sound pieces and experimental musical performance commissions included for example at the Beirut Arts Centre, Lebanon and at The Media Majlis, Northwestern University, Qatar.
Bradley is currently a member of CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice), researching a practice-based PhD in Sound Arts at the London College of Communication (LCC), University of the Arts (UAL).
Solo work
Broadcast
On UK’s experimental arts-radio station Resonance104.4fm since 2004, Bradley has performed live-improvised music and composed graphic scores for both solo performer and for the Resonance Radio Orchestra, in live broadcast public performances (e.g. London Architecture Biennale, Gasworks, London, Southbank Centre).
Presenting and producing weekly radio programme Six Pillars on Middle Eastern, North African arts and culture live broadcast on 104.4FM since 2005. Also a vehicle for a major research project Six Pillars resulted in an considerable audio archive and a residency with 5 Iranian musicians. For seven years Bradley’s Saturday night radio show on experimental dance music: Free Lab Radio, ran simultaneously.
Bradley’s pop-up arts-radio projects, such as Falgoosh Radio at Art Dubai (2013 and 2014), Jaou Tunis, Tunisia (2014 and 2015), South London Gallery (2014) for Welcome to Iraq. Radio commissions include a broadcast sound walk for MonaFoma 2018 at The Museum of Old and New Art, (Tasmania) – an imagined narrative by an aboriginal woman – and the live radio performance Petrosubjectivity, using found sounds and narratives for Radio Revolten, Halle, Germany.
Sculpture:
Designed to provoke active listening, Bradley has exhibited sculptures, installations and text-based textile works about sound in galleries such as Maraya Arts Centre (Sharjah), The Mine (Dubai), Tashkeel (Dubai) and in group shows at Strange Cargo Gallery (Folkestone), The Art of Nuisance exhibition for Sisters of Perpetual Resistance (London), Raven Row (London) and Prince’s Galleries (Shoreditch, London). In 2013 the leading body for sound art in the UK, Sound and Music, awarded Bradley a year’s residency at the cine-film studio no.w.here, (London). For the resulting 16mm film projector and reel to reel audio tape installation What Doesn’t Decay, 2013, Bradley treated home movies from 1970s Iran with crude oil and conducted interviews about design in US, UK and Iran in the same era.

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. Her work has appeared at Raven Row (London), Sight and Sound Festival (Folkestone) and The Mine (Dubai).
Collaborative
As sound-art duo Bradley-Weaver, sculptural and installation works investigating materiality, architecture and history featured in solo and group shows internationally. Artist commissions included Al Serkal Avenue, Sharjah Government (Leffayeh Wildlife Centre), D3, Design District, Dubai, Art Dubai 2015 (performance and installation), Quoz Fest (Dubai) and the International Symposium of Electronica Art 2014 (UAE), the pop-up radio station Falgoosh Radio, (an arts-radio installation at Art Dubai 2013 & 2014) an experimental platform for arts-discussion and field-recording. Together Bradley-Weaver have broadcast in pop-up radio stations at MIMA (Middlesborough Institute for Modern Art) for AV08, Frieze Art Fair 2006-2010 inclusive, at the Serpentine Gallery for Ririkrit Tirivanija’s solo show and a UBS weekend at Tate Modern for Resonance104.4FM.

Bradley-Weaver’s live, experimental music performance, commissions include Circular Landscapes an evolving series of performances for the Maraya Arts Centre, Al Qasba Theatre (Sharjah) and Al Serkal Avenue (Dubai), Sikka Art Fair (Dubai), The Mine (Dubai), Void Gallery for the European Capital City of Culture (Londonderry, N. Ireland), ReUse Kuwait and more.

Together Bradley-Weaver produced an experimental radio series for the Sharjah Art Foundation on radio history in the UAE, featured on Clocktower Radio (New York) and on BBC Radio 4 Xtra (UK).

Talks 

Bradley’s research has led to presenting at academic conferences and arts symposiums: Animal Utterances (Bristol University),  LOMA conference, Points of Listening and guest lectures (London College of Communication), Suden Radio (Villa Romana, Florence), Beirut Arts Centre (Lebanon), Redbull Radio Basscamp Dubai, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW, Berlin), The American University Dubai, Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (Karachi), REuse Kuwait, Habib University, (Karachi) and New York University Abu Dhabi, Share Conference (in Belgrade, Beirut, Tunisia and Croatia).

As a Quartet

Making electro-acoustic, experimental improv, Oscillatorial Binnage has featured in The Wire music magazine’s Under the Radar compilation release and performing at Cafe Oto (London), Merge Bankside Festival, Wellcome Trust, Tate Modern and more.

Composer and Improviser

Composer commissions include for the Resonance Radio Orchestra at London Architecture Week and the Victoria and Albert Museum and bespoke pieces for the South London Gallery, ICA London, Frieze Projects, The London Mela 2010 and 2011.
Performances include the Wapping Project (London), Club Integral (London),  REuse Kuwait, Sikka 2014 (Dubai), Noise of the Middle East, NYU (Abu Dhabi), London Mela and many more.
A full composer profile is listed on The British Music Collection.

Resident Artist

Residencies include the Lahore Biennial Foundation, Habib University – Karachi, New York University – Abu Dhabi, Maraya Arts Centre, Sharjah Art Foundation, Beirut Arts Centre, and Malja Studios, Bahrain. Solo for example was, as mentioned above, an Embedded Residency working with cine film,  awarded by Sound and Music, UK’s body for sound art and composition and hosted at n.o.where studios (London).

Collaborative performance, Malja, Bahrain.

Writing

Oxford Handbooks (2021), Savvy Contemporary Publishing (2021), The Wire magazine, Ibraaz online, Canvas Magazine, Brownbook Magazine, Arte East and more.
DJing
Following on from the radio series Free Lab Radio on Resonance104.4FM, Bradley has DJ’d experimental dance music and fringe genres in venues from museums (e.g National Portrait Gallery, ICA London) to art galleries and international music festivals such as Glastonbury, Exit Festival (Serbia) and Bestival (Isle of Wight), also on moored boat installations (e.g Venice Biennial for the Danish Pavilion), specialist conferences such as Cafe Oto’s Daphne Oram symposium, Sharjah Biennial opening, UAE (2016) and London squat parties such as Area 21, Peckham (2011).
On air Bradley has interviewed and hosted live guest mixes from a gamut of great names in the arts such as: Yinka Shonibare OBE, Charlie Dark, Acid Man, Mr Scruff, Egyptian Lover, Ceephax Acid Crew more.
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