MELBOURNE.- Sullivan+Strumpf Melbourne is opening an exhibition on one of Australia’s most exciting young contemporary artists for his first Melbourne solo exhibition since 2018.Based overseas for several years now, living and working between London, New York and Paris, Ry David Bradley is recognised as one of the artists at the forefront of new artistic theories and practices exploring the impact of digital technologies on contemporary art and society.

His exhibition, GEN opening at Sullivan+Strumpf Melbourne, also marks Bradley’s return to painting. The GEN series a standout as the first that have seen Bradley work directly with paint in seven years.

A decade into his career, Ry David Bradley’s work is continually evolving, his thirst for experimentation far from satiated. Driven by concern for how stories from the digital generation will be passed down through history, his diverse bodies employ new ideas and techniques as “necessary” experiments in 21st Century painting.

In all his works, Bradley seeks to remind the viewer that despite incredible advances across every field of human endeavour, painting has stood the test of time - its “radical permanence, romantic sensibilities, and continuing pre-eminence in the historical canon of Western art”, testament to the artist’s underlying rationale.

It is often said that an artist exists to challenge conventional notions of art and society. In today’s screen-centric, technologically reliant world, Bradley seeks to integrate the technology with the traditional.

As Cameron Hurst writes for the Sullivan+Strumpf magazine, “At a moment when new technologies become more advanced and more readily available than ever, Bradley returns to painting. But he doesn’t turn away from technology. The possibilities are too exciting to leave entirely to non-artists. So, he moves between worlds. Between neural networks and the human hand. Software and wet paint. Ry David Bradley is generating. This is what painting of the future looks like.”

Ry David Bradley originally studied New Media Video and Internet Art in the early 2000s, believing it to be the medium of his generation. Concerned about longevity and accessibility, he shifted his focus to painting – a medium free of the need for power or software, and insusceptible to becoming outdated or inaccessible, due to the fast pace of technology upgrades.

Now, he is melding the two. Generating subject matter using digital platforms, his flat images transferred onto Parisian linen before he begins painting by hand.

In 2012 he graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, with a Master of Fine Art, and a stack of awards including the JM Kerley Travelling Scholarship (in 2012), the VCA’s Athenaeum Club Award First Prize and a prestigious Sidney Myer Foundation Award (both in 2011). His had already begun exhibiting internationally, in New York and Vancouver.

Over the past decade Bradley has exhibited at galleries and in art fairs across Australia, the US and Europe; and gained representation by galleries in New York, Miami and Milan, in addition to Sullivan+Strumpf in Australia.

His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and Lyon Housemuseum, both in Melbourne, HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow, Poland, and Art21 Collection, New York; in the Aldala Collection of digital works; as well as by private collectors across the US, Europe, and Asia.

Ry David Bradley: GEN launches at Sullivan+Strumpf Melbourne 107-109 Rupert St, Collingwood, on Thursday April 20 to Saturday May 13, 2023.

Pop in for exhibition drinks and an opportunity to hear Ry in conversation with Archibald Prize Winner Sam Leach, Friday April 28, 6 – 8pm.

Ry David Bradley

b. 1979 in Melbourne. Lives and works in Paris.

Bradley continues a longstanding investigation of the 21st century painting. High contrast renders are achieved through a process of heating dyes onto the textured surface of tapestry, adding a layer of spray paint cast over the digital source. Rich hues often unobtainable by anything but the chromatic intensity of a screen, or of paint itself, in a process Bradley has slowly developed over many years of investigation.

In today’s screen-centric world, a conflation between the private and global occurs. Bradley’s pressing concern is how stories from the digital generation will be passed down through time. Bradley studied New Media Video and Internet Art in the early 2000s, believing it was the medium of his generation. Due to concerns about its longevity and accessibility, he shifted his focus to painting as a medium that does not require power or software and will not become outdated or inaccessible through upgrades.

Bradley received his Master of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Since then, he has exhibited widely both at galleries and museum in Australia, as well as in exhibitions and fairs in New York, London, Milan, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, and Palm Beach. Bradley is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf in Australia, The Hole in New York City, Bill Brady Gallery in Kansas City and Miami, and Brand New Gallery in Milan. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon House musem, and numerous private collections around the world.