Kissing Gate charcoal 120cm x 100cm (November 2007)
Artist statement: My main activity has always been drawing. I work directly from the landscape using charcoal and it is the quality of the marks on the paper that interest me. By heating and beating lengths of steel at the forge I can recreate these marks in my sculptures. The lines jump off the paper and dance through the air. As they are often almost two dimensional I call my sculptures ‘drawings in space’. My greatest influence has been the American Blacksmith Albert Paley whose skills I was lucky enough to witness at college and who inspired me to start working in metal.
Genre:
2D: Drawing, 3D: Sculpture
Contacts:
www.geocities.com/gabriellebradshaw
CV:
Since leaving Camberwell School of Art with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art Sculpture Gabrielle has had a hugely varied career. She has worked as a welder, blacksmith, set designer, layout artist, prop maker, artistic consultant, designer and sculptor. She has also been a television artist, fronting programmes across all channels, including five series of the BBC1 Art show ‘Hartbeat’ alongside Tony Hart.
Gabrielle’s sculptures are made from forged and welded metal. She learnt her blacksmithing skills at the Rural Development Centre in Salisbury and spent a year working as a welder in the metal shop of the National Theatre. In her drawings she recreates the same organic ‘beaten’ lines by working with charcoal onto paper.
Gabrielle has exhibited with the London Group at the Royal Academy, at the South London Gallery (where she won the SOGAT award) The Barbican Arts Centre, 12 Miles West Worthing, Oriel Makers Cardiff, Framework in Creekside and CPT Gallery London.
Commissions include 14 sculptures for The Underground Food Factory Wardour Street, display windows for Butler and Wilson and a balustrade for the Music Room Covent Garden. Her work has also been exhibited and auctioned at Sotheby’s.
She has a forge and workshop in Forest Hill.
2008 Exhibitions:
Gabrielle is currently exhibiting with Artdog www.artdoglondon.co.uk
Further examples of work:
Clarinet Wood charcoal 120cm x 100cm (November 2007)
Boyan forged & welded metal 60cm x 40cm x 10cm (Jan 2008)
