The metaphysical body - Godwin Bradbeer: a survey exhibition 1970-2005

The discipline of drawing and the practice of perceptual figuration in contemporary art have experienced profound challenge and radical developments in the latter decades of the twentieth century and the opening decade of the twenty first. The international developments in both western and eastern contexts have manifest considerable reassertions of purpose in a variety of modes of drawing and in the conception of figurative imagery in new cultural contexts.

The research project Godwin Bradbeer - The Metaphysical Body A Survey 1970 - 2005 is a large exhibition of museum scale that presents 34 works (including drawings, photographs, paintings and video.) selected from the defined period. Several of the works occupy entire walls and represent some of the most complex and daring drawing projects of the period.. This work is visually derivative from perceived human physiology nevertheless the aspiration is a transcendence of the means of depiction and the limitations of the data of appearance .

The research is supported by a catalogue (ISBN 0-9775149-2-7 with essays by Curator (Shepparton Regional Gallery) Kirsten Lacy and writer Dr Neill Overton (Charles Sturt University) The exhibition toured 8 regional galleries in Vic and NSW and was reviewed in Art and Australia Vol 44 No 3 Autumn 2007 other journals and in local press.
The primary contribution of this work to its field of research is to present a mode of iconic figuration that endeavours profundity at the risk of bathos without a slippage into irony, cliché, cynicism, banality or obscuranticism.