Jyll Bradley: Pardes

Jyll Bradley’s Pardes has evolved over several years, the artist watching the transformation and delving into the history of the Fruitmarket’s new Warehouse.

Bradley’s art draws on systems and structures of growth as metaphors for cultural exchange, place and identity. Here, she has taken inspiration from the structures created by historic Scottish fruit growers to make the most of both the light and the natural warmth in the bricks of a walled fruit orchard, and to the cultural heritage of the Fruitmarket as an old fruit and vegetable warehouse. The title comes from an ancient name for a walled fruit garden that gave rise to the familiar word ‘paradise’.

While its form owes something to the leaning design of historic glasshouses for growing fruit, Pardes’s impact is primarily that of a minimal abstract sculpture. Six beams made in wood and live-edged Perspex fly through the space from ceiling to floor. Lit from within, they create a canopy that envelops the viewer in warm, green light, sustaining us through the darkest time of the year from Autumn to Spring.

Bradley is interested in the life her sculptures take on once they are installed and outwith her control: ‘Far from being a passive thing in the world, the work is a living part of it – changed by light, weather and time … The sculpture will be a meditation upon the inter-connectedness of nature, culture, people and place: the ethical connection we have to art and each other.’

Bradley is keen for Pardes to be a welcoming, gathering place, an invitation as much as a sculpture. She invites us to inhabit it individually and in groups, in silent contemplation, individual and collective creation, or joyous, noisy celebration. During its time with us, the sculpture will host a number of new artworks, including Jyll Bradley’s own films; a performance by artist David Ward; an event for Book Week Scotland; and music programmed with Scottish Ensemble.

Thank you to the Jyll Bradley: PARDES Supporters’ Circle
Axel Beck and Cecile Belaman
Longrow Capital
Sarah Elson
Frank Krikaar
Bianca and Stuart Roden
Karen and Mark Smith
Freda and Izak Uziyel
Bina and Philippe von Stauffenberg

Supported by

Jyll Bradley exhibition guide: introduction

Jyll Bradley exhibition guide: horticultural connections

Jyll Bradley exhibition guide: the word ‘Pardes’