In this month's Mixing It Up feature, artist & curator Andrew Bracey shares the artwork he wishes he had made, who he goes to when he needs advice (listen out for this one!), his current work made in response to contracting long-Covid and gives a tour of an exhibition of his works at General Practice in Lincoln.
Andrew Bracey's practice hovers on the fringes of painting as it crosses over and expands into installation, curation, sculpture, drawing and animation. Bracey is intrigued by the visual saturation of contemporary life and how we make choices through looking. Work is often displayed on mass, with many individual elements combining to create a whole. Bracey questions the role of the original, the reproduction and exhibition display. His most recent work features 'parasitic', painted additions to ‘host’ historical figurative paintings. Bracey primarily works on reproductions of oil paintings, each varying in style, period and type of figuration - that are worked over with geometric/crystalline paintwork or disintegrate in gestural performances. The eye alternates between his contemporary addition and the original. Despite a consistency of rules adopted when painting, each work takes on its own unique character and alter the viewers perception of the original source.
Andrew Bracey is an artist, curator and academic based in Waddington, Lincolnshire. His practice-research explores the slippages between the original/reproduction, artist/curator, painter/painting; and emphasises the importance of looking, attentiveness and materiality in appropriation. His current PhD by Practice is exploring how contemporary artists use historical paintings to initiate a dialogue between the past and the contemporary; through the metaphor of the parasite and mutualism.He is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Lincoln. Bracey is co-leading the artistic research project, Bummock: Artists and Archives, with Danica Maier; and working on an (potentially lifelong) curatorial project, Midpointness, with Steve Dutton. Bracey’s solo exhibitions include: Usher Gallery, Lincoln; Nottingham Castle; Manchester Art Gallery; Transition Gallery, London and firstsite, Colchester. He has been featured in over 150 group shows; partaken in national and international residencies; presented his research at art and academic conferences, and has curated over 20 exhibitions. His recent solo authored book Enough is Definitely Enough - on contemporary artists’ interpretations of Velázquez's painting Las Meninas - is published by Beam Editions.