VICKY BROWNE
’INTO THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS THAT SPANS THE VASTNESS OF SPACE AND THE INFINITESIMAL SCALE OF MICROCOSMS’
6 MAY – 5 JUL, 2024
PUBLIC PROGRAMS:
Friday 24 May - In Conversation with Vicky Browne
Thursday 30 May - Kinetic Vibrations
Vicky Browne, Micro/Macro 1-3, 2023, installation view, perspex, graphite powder, gold lustre powder, enamel. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Into the interconnectedness that spans the vastness of space and the infinitesimal scale of microcosms embarks on a journey through the complexities of our embeddedness within technology, material, and ecologies.
Intricate dynamics at play within our interconnected ecologies and the intrinsic ‘thingy-ness’ of things are considered. Posing questions about power dynamics and the stuff of ‘us’, Into the interconnectedness… is an exhibition that playfully interrogates levitating laundry lint, screaming rocks and DIY electronics, prompting reflections upon who truly holds agency in our techno-ecological existence.
Vicky Browne, Into the interconnectedness that spans the vastness of space and the infinitesimal scale of microcosms, 2024, installation view. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
EXHIBITION TEXT
Into the interconnectedness that spans the vastness of space and the infinitesimal scale of microcosms
By Caleb Kelly
Vicky Browne’s installations have turned geological and cosmological. In these works, deep time is explored sonically. Invested in infrastructures of audibility (Mickey Vallee), these groupings of artworks generate novel ways of learning about material systems.
In the series of installed assemblages distributed throughout the gallery, the focus is not on the sound itself but on what the sound can tell us about the systems—systems that are always in excess of sound. On entering the gallery, what is heard is an orchestration of audible noises. We are invited to listen to the sonic whole, or we can enter the installation and focus our attention on specific and often minute sounds, each element a vibrating microecology; a turntable plays a copper record, on which are the sounds of bells and birdsong, audible through a speaker crafted from sticks.
Vicky Browne, Cosmic noise, 2017-ongoing, installation view grass sourced from Nullo mountain Wiradjuri country, clay, record player, copper, CD player, bells, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
In Cosmic Noise (2017-), the astronomical Big Bang is suggested through material sound and the notion that our existence is held within space dust, meteoroids and far-flung planets. Objects are imbued with nostalgia for a simpler time when the belief in a cosmic eternity was still viable. The Beach Boys sang songs about good vibrations, and the first full-disk photograph of the Earth was taken from the Applications Technology Satellite 3 to be subsequently used on the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog. In this era, visions of and from space allowed us to see humanity as a part of the vast, interlinked universe.
Vicky Browne, Cosmic noise, 2017-ongoing, installation view, grass sourced from Nullo mountain Wiradjuri country, clay, record player, copper, CD player, bells, dimensions variable. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
In the gallery's centre, weighted chimes are pulled across black graphite powder, leaving temporary circular paths that form from the slow movement. The Subterranean and the Cosmos (2023) produces tiny sounds created by the scraping weights that are energised to form audible tones reminiscent of watery underground caverns. These subterranean tones are sounded through stoneware speakers formed from the same materials as the dark pools—blackened, dirty.
Vicky Browne, The Subterranean and the Cosmos, 2023, installation view, glass, ceramic, wood, paper, polymer clay, electronics. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Vicky Browne, Cosmic noise disruption, 2022, installation view, CD player, copper, speaker, Dr Gillian Ross yoga lesson. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Scales shift, and ecologies become microcosms. Five blue-black iridescent ceramic objects sit in a circular network formed to reflect minute computerised tones that emanate from a slowly turning orb in Distant Networks (2023). Close by, Resonance+Stones (2023) is formed from three rock stacks, three rocks high, that are matt grey and stand inert until visitors touch them, causing the stoneware to react with a screeching sound—screaming rock.
Holding it together in rhythm, Drum Variations (2023) are formed from kettle drum-like sculptures that resonate drum skins covered in gold; cymatics meets microbiological imaging. The gold dust is shaken into forms resembling living organisms, like those witnessed through electron microscopes. These dust patterns formed through vibrations visualise sound and motion and constantly vary in form.
In Into the interconnectedness that spans the vastness of space and the infinitesimal scale of microcosms, sound is always more than sound, more than waves and air pressure. In the exhibition Vicky draws on us to ask, how does the universe sound?
Vicky Browne, Drum variations, 2023, installation view, metal, ceramic, vinyl, electronics. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Vicky Browne, Stuff of Life pt.2 and Stuff of Life pt.3, 2022, installation view, digital prints on Ilford Gold Fibre Pearl 290gsm and laundry lint with electronics. Photography by Jessica Maurer.
Vicky Browne, Into the interconnectedness that spans the vastness of space and the infinitesimal scale of microcosms, 2024, installation view. Photography by Jessica Maurer.