In this insightful and thought-provoking conversation, British artist Jyll Bradley will join Ben Harman, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland, to talk about her extensive body of photographic work.
The two will discuss Jyll’s many self-portraits from the late 1980s and early 1990s, what motivated the work, how Jyll explored her identity through her art, and her use of mixed media, notably the fusion of sculpture and photography, which makes her pieces so recognisable.
Jyll’s work Self-Portrait, Corduroy Jacket 1987-2023, as seen in the Graves Gallery’s Lives in Focus {LINK} exhibition, has recently joined Sheffield’s collection thanks to funding from the JG Graves Charitable Trust, Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Art Fund.
Jyll Bradley (b.1966, Folkestone, UK) is a British artist based in London who works across installation, photography, sculpture, film and performance. Her practice combines the formal vigour of Minimalism with ideas of queerness, identity, light and community. Bradley studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths’ College (1985-88) and the Slade School of Art (1991-93). In her early works she used photographic lightboxes, which could be found in street advertising, as an artistic medium and was the first in the UK to do so. Bradley’s focus on community and place-making has led her to create acclaimed large-scale public works, using her signature material of fluorescent Plexiglas such as The Hop (2022) for the Hayward Gallery. In recent years Bradley has been exploring her extensive archive of photography and in particular self-portraiture from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. This has given rise to gallery installations of photography and sculpture which she terms ‘memory rooms.’ These highly personal works reflect upon ideas of self and identity, past and present.
Ben Harman is Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland. As well as curating exhibitions and collection displays, he helps to manage and develop a collection of over 50,000 photographs dating from the 1840s to the present day. From 2014-2024, Ben was Director of Stills: Centre for Photography, a gallery and production facility based in the heart of Edinburgh. His curated exhibitions for Stills included solo presentations of work by internationally renowned artists and photographers such as: Markéta Luskačová, Ishiuchi Miyako, Cindy Sherman and Jo Spence. In 2023, Ben organised the Edinburgh presentation of the Johny Pitts exhibition, Home is Not a Place, an Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship project which toured from Sheffield Museums. From 2003–2013, Ben was Curator of Contemporary Art for Glasgow Museums and Lead Curator on Glasgow’s Art Fund International collecting project. He is a Trustee of the Richard & Siobhán Coward Foundation.
This event forms part of the programme of events complementing the exhibition Lives in Focus: Photography in Sheffield's Collection which continues at the Graves Gallery till 31 October 2026.
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Event description by organisers.
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