Sandra Bridie

CLAIM: An artist can make work from the gaps in another artist’s career.


Sandra Bridie"Normally with an interpolation what I do is look at the exhibiting history or CV of an artist and try to imagine an exhibition which has not been executed, that could possibly exist within the gaps in the information the artist had given me. So I ask questions like, `Are there any jottings about work you haven't gotten around to doing or ideas you thought of at midnight, flashes that don't bear up to scrutiny in daylight? Is there work that has not been completed, set aside? Is there a trajectory in your work which you haven't followed?’, those sorts of things.

I asked Stephen [Bram] all of this. But he had another idea. His idea was almost what I would call an extrapolation or future work, except that it does exist within his body of work even if it is currently just one tentative exploration. What it was is, Stephen wanted me to pursue a line of inquiry using the sphere as support. Until recently he had produced two dimensional works, paintings, drawings etc., but lately he has been making three dimensional structures, or floor pieces, as he calls them. The interpolation which will be seen in ADJACENT SPACE is kind of a projection into the immediate future. Stephen has made just one of these spherical works himself so far, but he sees himself making more of them in the future. He asked that I make some of them under his instructions, and that's what I did. When Stephen saw the result he said that the spheres were too perfectly executed, a bit neat I think he meant, to be his..."

Excerpt from interview with B.S.Hope (10/8/95)

Proxy Installation A; Stephen Bram: Untitled 1995Proxy Installation A; Stephen Bram: Untitled 1995 colour photograph 34.5 x 51cm

Can unoriginality be original? Bridie acts like a professor's research assistant, fulfilling a creative potential that someone else has been too busy to realise. She appears to have a willing colleague in this instance, but what if permission was not granted? How would you feel if she poached on your creative territory? (D.P.)

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