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 newly commissioned animated hologram by Dundee-based artist, Sam Lyon, known for his digital JellyGummies.

Oliver Braid was born in 1984, in Birmingham. He is an acquired taste living and working in Phew, an island off the coast of Glasgow. He studied for his BA Fine Art at Falmouth College of Arts and Master in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art. Solo exhibitions include ‘The one where we wonder what Friends did’, WASPS, Glasgow (2015), ‘Snorlax Beanbag’, Intermedia Gallery, CCA Glasgow, ‘Communal Dolphin Snouting’, Transmission, Glasgow (2013), ‘My Five New Friends’, The Royal Standard, Liverpool (2012), and ‘I’ll Look Forward To It’, Collective, Edinburgh, (2011). In 2013, he undertook a residency at Triangle France, and in 2014 was awarded a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary. In 2015 he was artist-in-residence at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee, and launched his first seasonal event venue, Phew.

The exhibition is supported by Creative Scotland.

Read Camilla Irvine-Fortescue’s essay Layers of Meaning

Take a video tour of the exhibition

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The Nude Ignity

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