About

Stephen Brandes

Much of Brandes' recent artistic practice explores the interplay of word and image as a vehicle for story building, with particular reference to travel fiction, political history and European traditions of absurdism and satire, positioning past histories against a speculated future. While it shares some affinity to literary fiction, in that it attempts to fabricate a world through both observation and invention, it differs fundamentally by eschewing linear narrative in favour of associative cross-reference, through often conflicting juxtapositions of material, image and text. For several years Brandes embarked on a series of very large, highly detailed drawings on floor vinyl, which charted a perpetually expanding fictional universe – the genesis of which was a journey through eastern and central Europe, following a route his grandmother had made in 1913, escaping pogroms in Romania. He has since produced a body of work, which not only includes drawing and painting, but also monumental posters, both digital and hand-made collage and most recently, video collages and sculptural installation. One underlying theme of this work considers the legacy of modern European history, by viewing human endeavor from oblique cultural and historical perspectives. It is fueled by an interest in how visual and pictorial languages from the past have been adopted within particular social movements, from the avant-gardes and totalitarian aesthetics of the early 20th century to the graphic sensibilities of more recent years. These are often put into conflict with my subject matter: the landscapes, the monuments and cultural artifacts that have evolved throughout Europe over the past 400 years. His re-engagement with this material is not out of nostalgia, but rather for the purpose of misappropriation, in order to reinvest fresh meaning to these subjects. The challenge is to create objects and images that present alternative views to commonly accepted standards of beauty and authority. It also attempts to consider our shared histories and future with a measured mixture of poignancy and humour. Stephen Brandes was born in Wolverhampton, UK in 1966 and now lives and works in Cork after moving to Ireland in 1993. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2005 as part of ‘Ireland at Venice’, and has shown in numerous exhibitions both in Ireland and internationally. Brandes has also worked on several curatorial projects, most notably Superbia, commissioned by Breaking Ground in Ballymun, Dublin, 2003 and "Beasts of England , Beasts of Ireland" at Visual, Carlow, 2013. With artists Mick O’Shea and Irene Murphy, he formed the absurdist culinary performance group, the Domestic Godless.