Visiting Artist Colloquium

media release: The Art Department Colloquium is a series supported by the Anonymous Fund and the Brittingham Trust. Visiting Artist lectures are held every Wednesday during the academic year, and are free and open to the public.

Discover the latest developments in fine art, craft, and design at our free public lectures by some of the nation’s most prominent artists, critics, and gallery and museum directors.

Wednesdays @ 5 – 6:15 pm, Chazen Auditorium

Leonie Bradley is a conceptual artist working in the field of expanded printmaking. Currently, she is working with AI-art generators to explore their impact through the traditional, analogue medium of wood engraving. She describes her work as in a constant state of flux: a balance between formal structure and experimentation, between repetition and one-offs. Playing at the intersection of processes, always with an urge to communicate ideas. She is constantly pushing at what a print can be: her work includes installation, animation, writing, film, and production. She often collaborates with scientists, musicians, and other artists to translate and distill research into simple concepts.

Bradley uses a wide range of materials and techniques, but she usually starts a body of work with wood engraving as the absolute concentration it demands allows her to be completely absorbed in the subject. Through this very slow, traditional and analogue medium, she investigates the impact of rapidly evolving, contemporary, digital technologies, such as AI-generated art and social media. After that intense period of thinking, researching, and making, she takes her ideas into different and unexpected directions.

Born in London, UK, she has an MA in Multi-disciplinary Printmaking from the University of the West of England in Bristol, close to where she now lives and works. She is a Xennial, born into an analogue world, quickly adapting to the digital world in her teens. It is from this duality that her desire to engage with technological and societal change stems.

Bradley has had a number of residencies in science labs, including the University of Bristol. Through her response to this residency, the installation Swarm, Bradley has engaged thousands of people across the world in making climate pledges. She was invited to meet and make a fortuneteller bee with HM Queen Camilla and to show Swarm at COP28.

An award-winning artist, Bradley is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and member of the Society of Wood Engravers. Her work is held in international collections including the V&A Museum (UK), Ashmolean Museum (UK), University of Warwick (UK), Zuckerman Museum of Art (USA), La Liga de Estudiantes de Arte de San Juan (Puerto Rico), The Sustainability Pavilion (UAE), CAFA (China), and Heilongjiang Museum of Printmaking (China).

Since 2017, Bradley has been the editor of Printmaking Today, the leading international journal of printmaking. She has a vast knowledge of contemporary printmaking and has judged many international, open call exhibitions. leoniebradley.com