'Take away my make up and underneath is merely not Buffo. An absence. A vacancy'.
Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter

The desire to rub a fictional reality up against the everyday probably best describes what drives Flora Bradwell's practice. Over the last couple
of years I have been creating a series of characters to populate an imaginary circus. Initially the ideas of spectacle and facade drove these
brilliantly coloured and patterned performers to distort themselves for their audience, showing off their luxurious paint and vibrant palette. The
heightened colour and textured surface mirrored the exhibition of display and theatricality associated with performance and the circus.

However recently I have followed the characters into a more domestic sphere. Andrew McConnell Smith's The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi,
with its enduring image of the celebrated clown performing his last benefit from a chair, influenced the introduction of a new character: The Sitting
Clown. And with his emergence came the foundation of an entire clown dynasty: The Cluen Family.

The Cluen Family Tree is a collection of 19 portraits representing members of The Cluen Family, including favorites: Uncle Tony, The One Armed
Strongman and Bozo, The Clown Who Ran Away. It is accompanied by a book by Bella Lordwarf (anagram of Flora Bradwell) detailing the
intrigues and tragedies of this great and fabricated family. Here the convention of portraiture is subverted in order to take the viewer into the
imagined reality of this strange Clown dynasty.