Francis Patrick Brady
Francis Patrick Brady works as an artist, musician and educator, using play and participation as strategies for creating installation, participatory performance and experiences that challenge the existing rules and structures of our everyday reality. Often his artwork builds an alternative world that runs parallel to our contemporary times, using worldbuilding, storytelling and play to engage and involve the audience within the creation of the work. The techniques of Participation, Roleplay, Worldbuilding and Play, are deployed as a conceptual framework for the creation of multi layered and long-term artworks that involve many physical and conceptual elements, such as collage, handmade clay objects, music/soundscapes, sewn fabric patchworks, Audio-guides, playing cards, short story text, and Virtual Reality. He has worked many years researching and developing techniques from the Nordic Live Action RolePlay communities, as well as socially engaged art, participatory performance and the pedagogical turn.
Francis is currently working on ‘Finding the Real Thing,’ which is an ongoing body of work that is developed around the concept of reality in relation to mediated life, using both virtual reality and ‘virtually reality,’ *(*a different way of looking at other virtual media, such as collage, drawing, & text), non-technological aids for creating an alternative reality. ‘I am a Liar & You Tell the Truth,’ is an Alternate Reality Art Project, that explores our relationship to truth and reality in the contemporary world. From the reality breaking paradoxes of the Greeks to an internet cult in search of a mathematical formula that helps them ‘solve’ reality, ‘I am a Liar & You Tell the Truth,’ seeks to allow an audience to Role Play concepts, of truth and fiction.
He is co-founder and curator at ‘Celsius Projects’ gallery, in Malmö, and is an associate lecturer at Chelsea College of Art, at University of London, for the last 10 years. He regularly organises workshops at conferences and other art universities and institutions, in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the UK. He has recently exhibited and/or performed at Liveart / Friisland (DK), Copenhagen Contemporary, Gislaved Konsthall (SE) and Verkstad Konsthall (SE). He graduated from the MFA Critical & Pedagogical Studies, at Konsthögskola Malmö, in 2017 and has presented other projects at ALT-CPH (DK), SIGNAL (SE), Moderna Museet (SE), PLX (SE), SØ gallery (DK), Delfi (SE), TURF projects (UK), Turner Contemporary (UK), Vermilion Sands (DK), and Roskilde Museet for Samtidskunst (DK).
Images: The Ignorant Gamesmaster, photo: Lena Bergendahl; A Monument for Play, 2021, photo: Lena Bergendahl; Infinite seats of power
Visit Francis Patrick Brady’s webpage – francispatrickbrady.com