William Bradley England, b. 1884

William Bradley was born in 1984 in York, England. He received his BA in Art and Design from York St John University in 2007 and his MA in Fine Art Painting from Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London, in 2008, selling out his end-of-year show upon graduation. He was selected for FutureMap 08, the University of the Arts London annual graduate survey exhibition, and was shortlisted for the Catlin Art Prize in both 2009 and 2011. He has lived and worked between London, Yorkshire, and Los Angeles, where he has been based for extended periods.

Bradley's paintings engage with the history of abstraction as both material and subject. His process is deliberately mediated: compositions begin as drawings and watercolours, pass through digital modification, and only then reach the canvas, where they are built up through collage and layering into surfaces of considerable physical depth. Three-dimensional coloured shapes emerge from the picture plane, simultaneously evoking painterly brushstrokes and sculptural form. By recycling and distorting the visual formulas of Abstract Expressionism, Bradley questions abstraction's role within modernism and its continued relevance in contemporary art. His references are specific and historically grounded, drawing on the work of John Hoyland, Sandra Blow, and Eduardo Chillida, among others, and his practice has been characterised as one that builds a more communal language of quotation into what might otherwise be a purely private visual discourse. The result is painting that is at once formally rigorous and critically self-aware.

Bradley has exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, California, where he was included in Baker's Dozen (2020), one of the few publicly verified institutional presentations of his work. His practice has attracted critical attention in publications and platforms including Art Review City, and he has been the subject of a published interview by Julia Rosenbaum (2019).

William Bradley participated in the artist-in-residence program at 68projects by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin in 2014. The residency culminated in his inclusion in Roster Crow, the inaugural group exhibition at 68projects, presented from 6 September to 8 November 2014, alongside Jennifer Packer and Alexander Kroll. Curated by Quang Bao, 68projects' first artistic director, the exhibition introduced the gallery's invitation-based rotating roster program, designed to help emerging artists expand their careers into Europe through exhibitions and publications. Bradley also participated in the group exhibition Person, Place or Thing: Works on Paper from 51 Artists at 68projects, Berlin, from November 2014 to January 2015, and was presented by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin at Volta NY, New York, in 2016. In 2024, he was included in Berlin on My Mind, the group exhibition at 68projects by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin celebrating ten years of the gallery's artist-in-residence program. His practice continues to develop through an ongoing interrogation of painting's history and the possibilities that remain within abstraction.