Grace Bromley

At the core of Grace Bromley’s work is a comparative rhetoric. She draws an analogy between humanity’s power to bring instability and destruction to the natural world, and the ways in which women have been understood as forces of potential destabilisation to the male social order. She posits the notion that the pejorative tropes of femininity that have been popularised throughout history - woman as monstrous, chaotic, or sublime - are better lobbied at humanity as a whole when we consider the current state of the natural world. As feminine irreducibility and complexity has the power to crumble the patriarchy, so too do we as humans run the risk of destroying the planet - our only home. 

 

In doing so, Bromley simultaneously calls for urgent recognition of climate change and its potentially devastating impact, while also critiquing the way in which women have been denigrated and deplored throughout time. She posits femininity as an embodiment that contains multitudes, complexity and fluidity, resisting the subjugation of one sex to another. 

Her piece featured in STUDIO WEST’s exhibition SUNBURN, ‘Afternoon Meshes’ is both calm and ominous; a landscape that is somewhat recognisable yet surreal and otherworldly. The imprint of humanity’s touch is easily deciphered, yet a wild and rugged sentiment remains. Bromley deliberately creates paintings which are dichotomous and irreducible, combining elements of the romantic, poetic, and haunting and welcoming hybridity. Her pieces are both naturalistic and man-made, resulting in a fantasised landscape that questions our relationships with the real places we inhabit.