Michael Bradshaw
Michael Bradshaw – MA/MFA
My work concerns what it is to create and maintain a sense of place and home. It particularly draws on my experiences as a parent, and of the care, routines, and processes of change and loss entailed.
The work is made of the found and re-purposed. In its detailed clusters it mixes the personal - a discarded toy, a forgotten keepsake, hair-knots from rounds of laundry - with similar commonly found urban detritus. The make-shift structures use found and repurposed wood, with a focus on the home - floorboards, cabinets, window-frames – and are built through an improvised and provisional approach.
The work also references the role of storytelling with the presence of haggis-bag clothing. This relates to the Scottish folk-cum-marching song figure of Aiken-Drum and the history of my hometown of Corby. A rapidly built iron and steelworks town, where thousands of workers travelled from Scotland in search of work and a home.