2017 RY DAVID BRADLEY
In the four years since receiving his MFA from the Victorian College of the Arts, Ry David Bradley has emerged as a leading post-Internet artist.
Bradley’s latest body of digital paintings, UPGRADE, have been heat-pressed into ultrasuede fabric and sprinkled with holographic glitter. The works resemble saturated photographs that have been blurred beyond recognition or Instagram images from the immediate future that are still in the process of loading. At the bottom of each digital painting is a deliberately stretched and pixilated “free app store style” banner ad, whose content comes inexplicably from a pre-digital universe. Juxtaposed against the hyperreality of Bradley’s digital paintings, the banners—which include vintage comic book ads from the 1950s and 60s—advertise a world that no longer exists. UPGRADE reminds the viewer that even as we stand on the cutting edge of technology and culture, watching a new world come into focus, small pieces of history will always permeate our contemporary bubble.