Louise Brady

From Louise Brady

 

When the students of Business and Arts Management were invited to review the work and practice of the Visual Arts students, we gate crashed a presentation exploring a project they had recently completed.  As part of first year in BA Fine Art, the students presented to their lecturers and fellow class mates the process involved in the self-directed learning project based on a theme of their choice. 

From Louise Brady

During these presentations Louise Brady’s work immediately resonated for me. Her photographs of desolate and form-free locations created an atmosphere of mild apprehension and tension. Her conscious decision to remove the presence of the figure from her photographs provided the viewer the opportunity to become drawn into large open spaces and create their own interpretation or narrative within the work. She commented on one of her images “ (it was) a space that felt so vast yet at the same time felt constricted”.  The tension alluded to in her photographs was not meant to be obvious, but formed a “strangeness” where the viewer is free to come to their own conclusions.  

From Louise Brady

 

The apprehension sensed in her work was created by Louise reviewing the striking sense created by absence and unease in banal locations such as empty car parks and public spaces. She has also experimented with the composition, combining various photographs to create a series of images resembling those of a filmstrip. 

From Louise Brady

Louise explained that her interest in tonal studies emerged in her work, and although she had not intended to primarily focus on photography, the work she produced created the atmosphere she wished to develop. Whilst exploring this project, she researched the artists Edward Hopper, David Hockney and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. All of who have previously focused on the suggestion of atmosphere created by the use of locations. 

From Louise Brady

Louise has now developed a series of mono-prints based on her photographs, producing small-scale prints with an emphasis on experimenting with different surfaces. The process she is using mirrors the process of the photographic technique of negative and filmstrips, which ties her prints in with her previous medium.  Louise has now progressed on to exploring an animation of images, and will show this work in her end of year show.