Braddon Snape

FEATURED ARTIST

Can you tell us who you are and how you describe your practice?

My name is Braddon Snape.

I’m a sculptor, although I usually refer to myself as an artist, as sometimes I feel the term sculptor can limit who I am, what I can do, and how I might be perceived.

Primarily, I work in three dimensions, and since I embarked on a PhD about a dozen years ago, I have been developing, refining and exploring an inflated steel technique.

Most of my work now uses that welded and inflated steel process.

What has informed the forms in your work?

I grew up on the lake, so my work is informed by boats, water and sails. I spent a lot of time as a kid working on my dad’s boat, when it was out on the slipway, fairing the surface of the hull and being around those beautiful boat forms.

I am also interested in the form of sails and the way they move and change, the way they might deform, crumple or become completely full, depending on the wind at the time.

You see that in the metal too. You see the way the material behaves under the pressure of air.

What interests you about the inflated steel process?

This kind of contest of forces is a really important aspect of my work. It always has been.

I have always been interested in the way materials behave and how I can manipulate them. With the inflated works, there is this additional thing where you are forming an object. You might start with a plan for how it is going to piece together, but then the final forming happens in a very short period of time.

There is all this planning, and then the inflation.

The final form can be a bit of a surprise, and that is always part of it. How the material behaves through that process is a really important thing. Something is being formed under pressure, or deformed under pressure.

Those things really interest me conceptually about the work.

What ideas sit underneath the work?

You can draw associations to ideas of pressure, release, constraint and freedom.

Instead of something freely inflating, I might be constricting it with clamps or bars or other elements. So there is suppression as well.

You can bring all those associations into the work. You only have to look at what is happening in the world at any given time, let alone right now.

How has the process changed your way of making?

Before I was doing the inflated works, the sculpture was more planned.

I still plan these things out, but when I get to the inflation process, I get surprises. I get this quick hit, if you like. The work is formed really quickly in front of me. It is energising, but it also gives me surprises.

There is also the opportunity for a more immediate process. In that way, it has a relationship to drawing, collage or painting. It has a bit more freedom.

What is it like working collaboratively?

There is surprise and interplay. James might throw something down and at times I might think, I don’t know if I would have done that.

Then it becomes about what I can add to it. How can I resolve what is happening in the composition now?

When you are working on your own, you are doing that anyway. You might lay something down or configure something and then realise there is still something wrong with the composition.

But in collaboration, it is almost like tennis. It is a great experience. There is a real freedom to it.

Particularly working with James, who has such a great spirit, it allows you to have that freedom. There are no egos involved. It is just, let’s play and see what we get.

How does public art change the work?

Public artwork can be much more inhibiting because you have safety factors. As soon as you are doing something outside, there are many more engineering considerations.

The challenge with these inflated works is that they are structurally light, so building engineering back into them can be quite a challenge.

What does the viewer bring to the work?

The viewer, or the participator, brings as much meaning to the work as anybody.

They bring all of their intellectual, historical and personal baggage to the work, and they receive it through that.

When I was teaching, one of my favourite projects for students was to make a work that does not look like something. It was such a challenge for first-year students.

I would say, as soon as it starts to look like something, change it.

It would do their head in a bit, because we all put order into the world by trying to identify what something is.

How did The Creator Incubator begin?

The Incubator started nine or so years ago, but the ideas behind it had been bubbling away for much longer than that.

I was originally involved with the Community Arts Centre before it closed down. I had a studio there for a few years, until about 2001, I think. During that time I was on the founding board of Newcastle Art Space, which was associated with the Community Arts Centre at the time, before it moved to Chinchen Street.

One thing about the Community Arts Centre was that it was great in the sense that there were a lot of artist studios, a black box theatre and lots of things happening.

But from my point of view, it did not have the community feel that it should have had. People were often locked behind closed doors, and there was not enough to get people interacting.

What kind of studio culture were you trying to create?

I refer back to my days at art school.

You are in a big shed or a big room with your little partitioned area, but you are in this big open space. You are not behind closed doors. Your fellow students are working in different spaces around you, particularly in sculpture, and ceramics is similar.

You are in more of a communal workshop atmosphere. Someone needs a lift with something, or asks you to hold something while they cut it. Because you are in this open space, people are interacting.

There is the practical sense of helping each other out, but also talking about the work, talking through problems and lifting each other up.

That was really important when I was thinking about this space.

How did the space come together?

It just so happened that at the time, I was building the big public work for Maitland, Clouds Gathering, so I needed a large space to make that work.

This whole shed was empty. The small gallery space had been a showroom, so it had potential. I could see the potential.

At the same time, the Community Arts Centre was shutting down. Council was selling the building back to the Catholic Church, and Renew Newcastle was coming to an end. I knew there were going to be a lot of people looking for studios.

There are always people looking for studios, but this was going to create a massive influx. It was a perfect storm in that way.

What has it become now?

We got a good core group of artists in and the energy was fantastic. The arts community supported it from day one. It was something we needed.

At our launch, we only had six or eight artists here at the time, but around 500 people turned up. That was crazy. It also encouraged the landlord.

Now we have 53 artists in around 2000 square metres of warehouse space.

It has been a ride, but it has become an institution without being an institution.

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Website: http://www.braddonsnape.com/

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