Stephen Bram (born Melbourne 1961) is renowned for works that investigate relationships between painting, the representation of architectural space and the everyday world. Since the late 1980s his abstract geometric paintings, drawings, large-scale wall-based works, light installations, films and spatial constructions have revolved around these ideas and have consistently followed a strategy of using perspectival points as their starting point.
Over the past several months, Bram has been developing a new site-specific work for Melbourne Now and the build is now underway. Constructed from ordinary building materials including steel, wood and plasterboard, and designed in line with the artist’s ongoing project of establishing a set of vanishing points as coordinates which determine the structure’s final form, this monumental new work is beginning to transform one of the white-cube third floor galleries at NGV International. With several more weeks to go until this work is completed and less than 8 weeks until the exhibition opens, these special preview images reveal a fascinating work-in-progress.
Bram has stated that the ‘overriding intention of the work is to repeatedly present and stage a specific relationship between the work and the world’. Bridging both architectural and sculptural realms, this complex and dynamic composition promises to provoke questions about our perception of space and open up new perspectives on the relationships between art, architecture and the world beyond.
Stephen Bram’s commission is supported by the Michael and Andrew Buxton Foundation.