The recent art of Christopher Braddock
SAFE. The word suggests comfort, security and trust. It alludes to an emotional and physical space where danger has no place, where secrets are kept and fears are allayed.
Safe (1999) is the title of a recent work by sculptor Christopher Braddock which explores the possibilities and limitations of such a space. Braddock examines the notion in all its contradictions, recognizing that to be safe can offer certain freedoms, but also that playing it safe demands caution or reserve and requires us to reside within set boundaries and to play by others' rules.
The work was exhibited in a small, narrow room at the Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland, in which Braddock hung a row of square tin boxes along the wall. Commercially constructed by a tin smith, the boxes reflected the shape, size and substance of biscuit tins, or metal safes where personal valuables are stored- repositories for the precious material evidence of memory and experience.
Yet experience cannot always be measured by material things and Braddock' s sculpture also engaged with the possibility of emotional and spiritual safety. The work brought a sense of the private, secret space of the confessional into the public, secular space of the gallery through a series of references to Catholicism. As the metal commonly used to make inexpensive, mass-produced Catholic votive offerings, Braddock's use of tin connected the work to the iconography of this belief system, a system in which prayer and worship encourage a sense of personal security and comfort. Further to this, Braddock embossed a mutation of the confessional's grill on the lid of each box. Rendered in the shape of a cross constructed from four phallic shapes, their forms... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline