Bradley Verhelle
artist & scholar
Portfolio
Below is a list of past projects. Each body of work has a corresponding page on this website detailing process, research, and execution of the project.
What about a memory, if anything, makes up an identity? What does it mean to lose a memory, and what does it take to learn to forget? How mutable is a recollection, and what makes a thought 'real'? Who are you right now? Can a memory be shared, copied? To what extent? Is it possible to grow by means of regression? How do we remember slowly?
Mnemonic Mercury explores what it means to forget and asks how much we can concede while maintaining personal identity. Twelve color-film photographs mounted on
Obelus to Ruination is an exhibition of photographic work outlining and exploring the process of reaping memories from birthplaces, hometowns, and other places of origin. Through the hazy lens of alternative printing processes, "home" becomes an amalgamation of the lived and the liminal, compelling viewers to hold onto that which they can identify from their own homes, childhoods, and memories. The roadside trail, the rusted bridge, the desecrated barn; all of these become the show's namesake obelisks, monuments to ruin. The work curates a collective memory among those engaging with the work and encourages us to hold these spaces close — whether or not we know them.
IDLE FRONTIER is a collection of large-format alternative photographic prints by Bradley Verhelle. The project explores historical, contemporary, and personal accounts of the land on which the Seneca Army Depot once stood in a story that stretches from before the 1940s to the present and beyond. The ‘frontier’ is the edge between the known and unknown, a place so ripe for discovery that we associate the word with exploitation of resources and of people. Unlike most frontiers, this land has already been exploited, squandered, and tainted. Despite the site’s repeated history of dispossession, the Seneca Army Depot has regressed back into the realm of the unknown and the undiscovered. The ‘unknown’ of the Depot is degenerative, as if the site has been re-shrouded in mystery.