The Nude Ignity – Oliver Braid

The Nude Ignity. Oliver Braid. 14 January – 20 February 2016. Oliver Braid’s work has been led by attempts to answer a question first posed by writer, raconteur and gay icon, Quentin Crisp in 1981: how, if at all, may an object express its maker? Opposed to tackling Crisp’s question directly, Braid is committed to oblique approaches in order to generate new angles of understanding. Since 2012, he has been considering the query from a perspective the artist calls ‘The Certainty of Insignificance’, which extolls the imperative of ‘existential exuberance’ regardless of attention from others. ‘The Nude Ignity’, has been inspired by the individual invocation of personal focus, the eccentric wish to be both noticed and ignored, futuristic perspectives on audience engagement and ‘an imaginary experience within an altered zoo’. The work was developed through posing a series of questions, such as: ‘what would a hand look like if it didn’t look like a hand?’, ‘what would anything look like if it didn’t look like anything?’, and ‘how might one describe the asymmetry between ‘doing something’ and ‘seeing something being done’?’ Braid’s practice explores definitions of objects, from their object-hood to their subsequent social application, through experimental collaborative and curatorial compositions. His work is influenced by ‘an aleatoric [chance] sensibility uncovered under popular twenty-first century thinking; observations of objects wandering with well-being’. ‘The Nude Ignity’ features a new commission by Dundee-based artist, Sam Lyon, known for his digital JellyGummies. www.jellygummies.com The exhibition is supported by Creative Scotland. Exhibition preview: Wednesday 13 January 2016, 6-8pm.