Through sculpture, drawing and photographic processes Branigan explores the space between materiality and representation. Using representational objects from botanical plates to dolls’ houses, Rob Branigan works with sculpture and print techniques to show how much is lost when ideas and constructs are squeezed to their limits. Layered and converging forms, the sculptures are a boundary between reality and a fiction that speaks as much of the past as it does of the future.
Using an array of material processes, bridging the handmade, fabricated and found object, Branigan gives life to a passing of time – markers, moments and turning points – creating forms that simultaneously grow and sit frozen in time. Relying on personal memories and collective associations, his work and practice is a response to the contemporary moment; its preoccupation with progression and materialism, and the discontent that this can afford. Amidst these reflections on the past and its lingering presence, there emerges a sense of hopefulness, potential, and enchantment.
Recent exhibitions include ‘Apricity’, 12.26, Dallas/Los Angeles, 2023, ‘The last train after the last train’, Public Gallery, London, 2023 ‘I Want to Show You…’, Grove, London, 2023 ‘Companions’, Union Pacific, London, 2021 ‘Under the Volcano’, M74, Mexico City, 2020, ‘At Odds with Everything We Touch’, Standpoint, London, 2020