Perth Voice Interactive

INSPIRATION is just about everywhere for Mount Lawley artist Clay Bradbury (pictured).

From the curious Lincoln Street sewage gas ventilation stack to the foreboding frontage of the brutalist monstrosity Fesa house, local landmarks find their way to his unusual canvas scavenged from bits of wood during roadside collection.

Bradbury says his affinity for industrial spaces comes from when he had a job as a youngster sweeping up old factories and washing windows at night after everyone had gone home.

“That feeling of being alone in an industrial space … that forms what I do now,” he says. “I did have an affinity for mathematics and geometry plays a strong part in my work. Functionality is a big part of my work: A lot of buildings I paint are public buildings and the objects I paint are common objects.”

Buildings that have been demolished are almost an unintentional theme in his work: he didn’t set out to document places that have since been demolished like Fesa House, it just so happened that so many places were being knocked down it was an unavoidable side-effect.

“It seems I like the things that the government doesn’t or the developers don’t. These days we just seem to use excuses like it’s going to cost too much to get the asbestos out, but it seems ridiculous that we’d pull out some iconic modernist building because it’s got some asbestos in it.”

Bradbury has often worked in the industrial world: he spent time as a hazardous waste engineer, and recalls wading through waste-deep cyanide in a full hazard suit and armed with a giant sucker to get it all out.

These days art is becoming his main gig “more and more”.

His first solo exhibition Wayside opens November 23 at 3pm and runs to November 28 at kurb gallery, 312a William Street, Northbridge.

by DAVID BELL