The Thousands

You know that feeling you get when you stand in the ocean at night, and the waves batter you, and you look at the stars, and you feel all tiny like you’re either gonna drown or cry? Well, I only really feel like that after vast quantities of goon, but back in Romantic times it was referred to as the ‘the sublime experience’. Sometime after that period in art and literature everyone realised it was all a bit bourgeois…

So this Friday Brad Lay’s solo show, I’m Gonna Krill You! opens. Great title, huh?! The relevance of that dubious art history lesson is that Lay’s work is all about the feeling in your stomach when you stand in the ocean at night after vast quantities of goon. That may or may not be how Brad would explain his oeuvre, but trust me kids, I know these things. A two centimetre boat nestles in metres of white gallery wall. A shadowy image projected from a creaky pedestal fan sails across a surface and turns into a mermaid.
 
Lay playfully prods and teases out the complexities of Romanticism in the contemporary art world. Don’t expect to feel alienated or baffled though. Gentle but memorable, funny and intelligent, Brad Lay is one to watch.