D O V E B R A D S H A W
Six Continents
September 8 - November 11
2006 Gwangju Biennale

Dove Bradshaw: Six Continents: salt brought from each continent has been poured into mounds. A suspended separatory funnel steadily drops water on each causing a chemical metamorphosis. The hues and the specific physical responses to water stem from the mineral deposits particular to their points of origin: Africa, gray; Antarctica, white; Australia, brown; Eurasia, ivory; North America, green; South America, pink. For this exhibition Eurasia will be represented by salt from Gwangju. This work is a continuation of the artist’s well-known exploration of means and materials directed towards sculptures that change shape.

The opposition of the two interactive elements, water and salt, effect ever-shifting reactions that includes the growth of miniature fractal forests, and other sculptural re-crystallizations. John Cage observed that, “The work of Dove Bradshaw works with our changing conceptions of time and space … She's involved, as we are in our lives, because of art, with an almost scientific procedure, so that she can experiment in such a way as to prove something. And she can subject us to the results of her experiments, which can open us to the life we are living.”

Dove Bradshaw’s early fusion of scientific exploration with art, now broadly embraced in the Science/Art movement, “weathering” works and nature based art has anticipated activities of later generations by several decades. In 1969 she pioneered indeterminacy in the visual arts in such various ways as the use of chance positioning of work, choice of materials particularly susceptible to weather and indoor atmosphere, the unpredictability of birds, the gradual erosion of water or the use of inherently unstable substances such as acetone, mercury and sulfur. Time is no less an important factor. Her work is represented in the major American and many of the important European museums and exhibits regularly in the US, Europe and Asia. This is Bradshaw’s first exhibition in South Korea although her work is already in the collection of Mrs. Hyun Sook Lee in Seoul. In June for the Second International Free Forum the Baronessa Lucrezia Durini commis-sioned Bradshaw’s Radio Rocks for the town of Bolognano, Italy to join its other permanent installations and will be an installation at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in the spring of ‘08. This fall an overview of her oeuvre will be at Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA.