ANDREW BROWNE

Much of Browne’s work centres around an approach that he describes as an ‘accumulation of glimpses’. The sense of amassed moments manifests in multiple ways, most clearly in his repetition of certain imageries through different media. For example, the abandoned balloon with a smiley-face in a forest that appears in the photographs From the Periphery #2 (2010), Smiley-Lost (2012), or #9 (2016), also features in the oil painting Deflated (2011). Utilising another medium to recreate similar compositions, Brown seeks to reach a greater understanding of the moment he has captured.

Gnarled tree branches are a common theme in Browne’s drawings, paintings, and photographs. In the charcoal drawing #30 (2014), a branch is so highly stylised as to appear almost alien; its disorientation and uncanniness are emphasised by the tightly cropped framing—a common compositional strategy in Browne’s work. In his oil painting A visitation (blue) (2015), Browne depicts a similar branch but with colour, including a blue sky that gradates into black in the bottom. Compared to the stark contrast of black and white in #30, the variations in focus and blur in the painting makes it possible to detect a sense of motion in the branch.

While Browne’s tree branches convey a somewhat malevolent presence—a sentiment echoed in his charcoal works depicting water and waterfalls—other works cultivate a more hopeful and playful quality. In his ‘Pavement’ series (2016), the artist records small, odd, and banal moments that would otherwise be lost, pineapple ring discarded on a footpath in #11 (2016), slumped on top of its damp trace, or the small piece of rectangular wood somehow resting on a wire netting in #8 (2016). In the same series, however, works such as #9 with the smiley-face and #4 (2016), depicting a graffitied mask that peeks through a hole on a wooden fence, also point to a potentially destructive and unnecessary manmade intervention on nature.

Browne lives and works in Melbourne.

Casey Carsel | Ocula | 2018