Jess Bradford, 'Moon on Water'

The title of Jess Bradford’s solo exhibition Moon on Water takes its inspiration from an old East Asian proverb ‘Mirror Flower, Water Moon’.

Much like the slipperiness of time and memory, the proverb itself is also hard to pin down. Perhaps one can think of it as the unattainability of something, it can be seen but not touched, like a flower’s reflection in a mirror or the way that the moon shines upon the surface of the water. What we see in those reflections is a mere copy, a mirage.

Taking this metaphor of a reflection Bradford has created a new suite of ceramics and miniature paintings that engage with the many layers of memory and representation. The imagery of animals that appear in these new paintings - one of which one is coloured, something new for Bradford - is taken from the artist’s archive of found photographs of Haw Par Villa, a ‘cultural theme park’ in Singapore. The animals however are actually just another mirage, they are sculptures held within the park, part of the Villa’s attempt to create a ‘mirror’ of culture rather than a true representation.

The ceramic pieces mimic the rock forms also found in the backgrounds of the archival photographs from the park, they vary in size and colour as well as technique. Some are fired to stoneware and glazed while others remain in bisque, their colours ranging from cotton candy to rich blues and umber. Although treated as individual pieces what does bring them together is the way in which the colours act like a patina, a layer upon another layer, representing the many layers of time and memory that slip and slide against each other within these works.  

Moon on Water the exhibition, much like the proverb it is named after, is not about offering a definitive answer but rather creating a space to reflect on the many ways in which a time, a place and a memory can never truly be fixed.

Talia Smith