ConFigured: Braddon Snape

Hitting us in our humanity

A conversation between Braddon Snape and Lisa Slade

The world certainly seems to have an ambivalent relationship with machines right now,

particularly with those things that attempt to merge the machinic with the human, or even

the animal. Conversely, your work has taken an anthropomorphic turn and it seems more

human than ever. Talk to me about that, and don’t use artificial intelligence to do so.

I think your thoughts are prompted by the work Hybrid (working title). It signals the

beginning of this new body of work. As the title suggests it is a hybrid of the two opposing

impulses in my previous work. It is a confluence of the sleek and the somewhat mechanical.

Mirror-polished forms meet organic painted surfaces, resulting in the anthropomorphic

turn, as you describe it.

You mention AI and you’re on the money there. By the way, AI has not assisted me with my

answers (I never seem to agree with it.) Which has to be a good thing, right? The

emergence of AI, presaged by the age of digital reproduction, has been front of mind since

the inception of my inflated steel works and my related PhD research. The inflated works

are afforded a life of their own, and that relinquishing of control, along with the element of

chance, really excites me. All but impossible to replicate, these works exceed the limits of

my control and the slightest changes throughout the process deliver different results.

Not only have your works become more embodied — inhaling and exhaling into the world

around them — but they have certainly become more colourful. Colour gets a bad rap in the

Western history of art. It has been seen as ornament, as unnecessary adornment, and even

as crime. David Batchelor writes of the fear of colour, or Chromophobia, as a force that

underpins modernism. It was this same modernist zeal that also pushed away from the

human. Art aimed for an ideal state of being that was less colourful and less human. What

for you Braddon is the relationship between colour and humanity and how do you account

for your recent turn to colour?

Ooh, this is such a loaded question! My ‘artistic upbringing’ was informed by what I see now

to be strict Modernist (even Formalist) principles. I suppose I started out as a disciple. And

that training will always be with me but I have worked hard over the last thirty or so years to

break some of those Modernist shackles.

After avoiding colour, and adhering to the ‘truth to material’ dictum for many years, colour

is new for me. Colour came when I started inflating steel. It was an intimidating leap but I

knew this work needed colour, and bold colour. Like music, colour invokes emotion. It hits

us in our humanity.

The combination of vivid colour and the anthropomorphic also lends a humorous element

to this new work. We all need a laugh in this age of machinic uncertainty. Some of the works

read as sight gags complete with visual innuendos. What makes you laugh and how is this

translated into the work?

My work has always been about sex, according to many of my artist and non-artist friends.

They are probably right but I believe there is more going on than that. Humour is certainly

important for me right now — I have given myself licence to have fun and the occasional

sight gag makes people laugh, which in turn makes me laugh!

Finally, how do you want people to feel about your sculptures?

You know what? I don’t think I have ever been asked that question and I’m not sure I have

ever asked that of myself but I do consider how it will be received, on its own terms in the

here and now. In this age of restraint and suppression, I want people to feel something.

Lisa Slade is the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History in the School of Culture and

Communication at the University of Melbourne. She first wrote about Braddon Snape’s

work in 2004.