DOVE BRADSHAW

(USA)

Dove Bradshaw (American, b. 1949) was born in New York City and currently lives and works there. Beginning in 1969, she pioneered the use of indeterminacy in art, exploring the unpredictable effects of natural elements through sculpture, painting, performance, and film. She is renowned for her chemical paintings, which evolve with atmospheric conditions, and her innovative fusion of art and science has greatly influenced the Science/Art movement, "weathering" works, and museum interventions.

Bradshaw’s work embraces chance and change, employing materials like acetone, mercury, sulfur, and substances susceptible to erosion, weathering, or atmospheric shifts. These gestures include chance placement, the influence of birds, and the gradual impact of water.

Her career includes exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and CUNY, with works in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the British Museum in London. Since 1988, Bradshaw has also had a close collaboration with Sam Jedig of Stalke Galleri, where she has exhibited extensively.

Her collaborations include a decade as artistic advisor for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, designing sets, costumes, and lighting for their global productions. John Cage, a long-time collaborator, featured her in the 1991 Carnegie International and his Rolywholyover Circus. Publications on her work include Dove Bradshaw, Works, 1969–1993, a collaboration with Cage and Thomas McEvilley.