Braddon Snape is a Newcastle based sculptor. His latest body of work is inflated steel
sculptures. They start off as flat sheet which he cuts to shape and then welds edge seams.
They're then inflated using compressed air. I was asked along to have a look at this process
and also had a talk with Braddon about his work.
I guess a few things led me down the path which eventuated in this new direction in my
work. Previously my work was very much about metaphor and I'm using themes like journey and
having sort of the aesthetic of boats and yeah forms, minimal kind of forms and I was very
interested in doing a large scale work that engaged the viewer or the participant physically
so they could actually potentially move in and through the work. Primary thing I guess
was the undertaking the PhD. The PhD originally was going to be wrapped around what I do in
the sort of large scale public artwork side of things anyway but once again didn't win
any projects to work through that area of the PhD so I was looking for other things to extend
my practice and kind of stumbled across this process of inflating steel and once I inflated
one the first inflation as soon as I did that I kind of knew that this would be the start
of a whole new direction. It was such a sort of for me it was such a remarkable process
to do, to witness. I just knew straight away it was going to take me off on this new direction.
This work is intended to be autonomous really. The resultant works are all about the process,
the material process, the force of air forming these works is so much what the outcome of
these works is all about. It's that act of the steel being pushed and forced and being
shaped and formed right before our eyes and it's the result of that process. Ideally it's
existing in itself, it's not trying to allude to anything else apart from that act of creation
I guess. The thing I really like about this work, it's given me a real sense of freedom.
My previous work was fairly controlled and thought out particularly the large work you
know it was planned out over a reasonably long period of time. Now this work which I've
been developing probably for nearly three years now since I did my first inflation, it
still has control but I've given over a lot of control compared to my previous work. It's
a lovely balance between me understanding the process and the more I do it the more
I understand the process and the kind of results that I'm going to get. So I have a fair idea
of what's going to happen every time I do this but there's always this element of chance
or the unknown as in how the material is going to behave. The material depending on the shape
that I choose, the combination of curve or straight line or convex concave curves, all
those relationships between surface area and so on, they all dictate how this thing might
inflate and then I might add sort of clefts or seams to make the material behave in a
certain way from my liking. So it's a real sort of conversation or real sort of dance
with what I know and what's going to happen and what I'm sort of imposing on the material
with what the kind of magic of this process throws at me and that's what I enjoy so much
about it.
I choose materials, I'm sort of choosing two different types of materials in the exploration
of this work. The regular cold rolled mild steel which ends up needing to be a painted
surface or the mirrored stainless steel variations on the mirrored stainless steel surface.
And both approaches I really enjoy for different reasons. The painted surfaces really sort
of turn this thing into such a striking form and using for kind of the more industrial
colour alludes to the industry in which this steel is created and these forms sort of come
from although it's completely alien at the same time. One thing I don't like about that
process is that it hides some of the process, you don't see the way the metal is changed
by the welding process and so on. So that's what I like about the mirrored stainless steel
is that I don't try and hide the welding of the stainless steel, it gets cleaned up a
little bit after the process but you can actually see the staining or the burning of the edge
of the metal from the welding. So it's all there, the whole process is there for you
to understand what's happened throughout this. Some of that's come from my PhD research
with reading into things like phenomenology and so on and just the raw materiality of
the process. So the mirrored stuff, the thing I like about that also brings the viewer into
the work which I'm talking about the PhD again, it's kind of where my whole PhD research
started where someone who encounters an artwork actually sort of becomes immersed in the work
and one can't exist without the other, that experience and the mirrored stuff is perfect
like that. As you move around it, depending on what environment it's in, it changes and
as you move and experience it, it changes and under this sort of mangled, buckled surface,
it's constantly evolving.
Oh wow, it's amazing, that's so cool, how does that feel to see it like that. I can't
help but keep pushing, there's no leaks yet. So that can happen? Yeah but now often I'm
getting leaks. Yeah right, oh my god. So yeah, potentially sometimes with one like the yellow
one over there, they get the leaks. This work that I've been developing, it's been working
towards a show at Maitland Regional Art Gallery, it opens in September. So it's been really
three years of this development of this inflation process, gradually building up and resolving
what the show might be. The title for the exhibition at Maitland is materiality performed. I think
that's an indicator of one way I think about this work. It is the performative aspect of
how the work is created right before your eyes, which is really exciting and exhilarating
for anybody to witness to watch this thing form in front of their eyes. And it's exhilarating
for me every time, I've done it many times now but still every time it's exhilarating.
And I kind of equate it to action painting, like the sculpture version of Jackson Pollock,
you know, it's laying down paint, dribbling paint, it's kind of the sculpture version
of that being in the moment. Although there's some planning about the form and shape that
I'm originally starting with, that being in that moment inflating and deciding how the
material is being responsive to how the material is behaving and then deciding how far to
push it, how far am I willing to push it. And then that moment where I say, okay, stop,
that's enough.
Okay, so we've got a big link here. You can see there's still a lot of pressure in there.
I'll take this off now. I showed you in the video where we've got really heavy in the
middle, whereas this one didn't so much because I actually sculled the other side of the controls
here. And because of the fold, is that partly the fold? Is that how you end up? I know you
could fold this, it's going to be a bit catapulted, the windows will be a bit catapulted, that's
it. Wow, it is so cool. Wow. It looks good standing up too.
Recently, I secured a large project for Maitland City Council. So it's been a perfect timing
for exploring this inflated steel process. So I'll be inflating these large mirrored
stainless steel cloud forms for this project by the river at Maitland. So I'm very excited
about that. There's lots of work to go for that, but that's something to look forward
to in the next 12 months or so, the results of that.
