Jess Bradford is a Singaporean born and Sydney-based artist, working across painting, ceramics, video and installation. Her work explores her mixed race heritage by questioning stereotypical representations of cultural or national identity. She destabilises concepts of an authentic, or static cultural identity by working with reproductions and self-reflexive forms. Her current work examines a Chinese cultural theme park in Singapore called the Tiger Balm Gardens. The park exhibits painted concrete dioramas based on traditional Chinese folklore and history. Privately built in the 1930s by the Burmese-Chinese brothers behind the heat rub ‘Tiger Balm’, and publicly bought in the 1980s, it has been renovated several times to portray different representations of Chinese culture. The project playfully questions how we define Chinese culture, especially among Chinese diaspora, while engaging with personal concepts of memory, cultural identity and belonging.
Jess Bradford (b.1987 Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Sydney. Bradford holds an MFA by Research from Sydney College of the Arts, and was a recipient of the Australian Postgraduate Award. She is currently exhibiting as a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize 2019, at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and she has been a finalist in the John Fries Memorial Prize, the Tim Olsen Drawing Prize, and the Jenny Birt Award. Bradford has participated in solo and group at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, 2019; Archive Space, 2014; Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, 2014; Firstdraft Gallery, 2013; and Penrith Regional Gallery, 2013. She has been awarded the Blacktown City Art Prize for watercolour in 2012 and 2013. Bradford’s work is held in the collections of Judith Neilson, and the Ford Land Company. Jess Bradford is represented by Galerie pompom, Sydney.
