Meet the artist: Jyll Bradley
8 April 2025
A major exhibition titled 'Running and Returning' is now on display at The Box (until 2 November 2025), charting the career to date of Jyll Bradley. Read on to find out more about this multi-talented artist who has been working across a range of different mediums for more than 30 years.
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Jyll Bradley was born in Folkestone, Kent in 1966 and is now based in London.
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She is a multi-disciplinary artist who works across installation, sculpture, performance, film and photography.
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Bradley studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths’ College, London from 1985-1988 and at the Slade School of Art, London from 1991-1993.
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In her early works she used photographic lightboxes, which could be found in street advertising, as an artistic medium, and was one of the first artists — if not the first — in the UK to do so.
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While many of Bradley's works are deeply personal, they also explore themes and narratives that are relevant to us all including ideas of identity, cultivation, creativity, community and belonging.
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As well as being an artist Bradley has worked as an award-winning writer for BBC Radio, creating original dramas and documentaries focusing particularly on women's lives and hidden stories.
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Bradley’s interest in community and placemaking has led her to create a number of large public artworks, using her signature materials of LED and fluorescent plexiglass. The Hop, which can currently be seen in Tavistock Place, is a great example of this.
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Bradley’s work is held in major public collections including the Arts Council Collection, the Government Art Collection, Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery and the National Library of Australia in Canberra, as well as important private collections aroud the world.
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Recent presentations include Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room (2024), Frieze Sculpture (London, 2023), Threshold, (Kaunas, Lithuania, 2022) and Pardes, The Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh, 2021).
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Bradley was adopted at birth and she explores the subject of childhood adoption in some of her more recent works. Her adoptive family have strong connections to Plymouth and the South West and these are explored through a series of displays in The Box's Active Archives gallery.
Jyll Bradley: Running and Returning continues at The Box until the end of Sunday 2 November 2025. Opening hours are 10am-5pm Tuesday-Sunday and selected bank holidays (not open on Easter Sunday). Entry is free.