bradycollings, do i not fill heaven and earth?
June 10 - July 1, 2022
Lubbock-based artist bradycollings translates meditations on domesticity, nostalgia, and voyeurism, as they relate to queerness, into objects and images in do i not fill heaven and earth?. In their featured mixed media work, bradycollings uses repetition as a tool to explore anxiety-inducing cyclicality, as well as the comfort that can be derived from such thought patterns. Images are repeated, manipulated, and disfigured, allowed to deviate and distort, as thoughts or memories do, often falling back into line from momentary slippages. The shifting back into place, evidence of such slippage, is further accentuated by the nervous quality of the image-making, out of focus and blurry, existing within a space of uncertainty and apprehension.
do i not fill heaven and earth? investigates Home as a concept and the associations attached to it. By appropriating wallpaper patterns, photographs, and other forms related to domestic spaces, bradycollings evokes a feigned nostalgia to explore how these spaces often feel inaccessible to queer people, and the emotional repercussions that arise when a body is born into a space where its inherent design creates opposition to existence. Images used are vernacular in nature, creating the sensation of browsing through a personal photo album.
The featured work also demonstrates bradycollings’ interest in voyeuristic themes. By situating the viewer as a voyeur, the work initiates commentary on how queer people are often perceived through their intimate relationships by default, immediately sexualized by others even if this perception is against the subject’s will or consent. This theme is explored through images of the artist in drag, where the viewer is gazing at a figure often in lingerie or various stages of undress, and by creating home-like sculptures or images that the viewer has to peer around and into to in order to consume the information.
In do i not fill heaven and earth?, bradycollings offers their personal thoughts, experiences, and memories as tools for grappling with the experiences and treatment of queer people within spheres that have been constructed for those who do not identify as queer. In doing so, bradycollings reclaims the spaces which have traditionally excluded queerness.
Photographs by Laurel Coyle