Mary-Louise Browne is a sculptor of words - she has been working at the forefront of text-based conceptual practice in New Zealand for over 30 years. Using text in lieu of imagery, her work speaks to the visual while refusing the prevalence of images and their authority over contemporary imagination. She explores the metaphoric, material and visual qualities of language in a range of media including neon, granite, glass, metal, canvas, leather and paper.
Read MoreIn her work, found texts - mottoes, maxims, instructions, movie or song lines - are represented and given new form and context. The works challenge conventional readings and demonstrate how apparently simple words can have multiple layers of meaning. There is a delight in the double entendre and the clash of media and meaning, high art and the signwriter's craft.
Much of her work investigates the nature of art itself and the role of the viewer in 'reading' and interpreting an artwork. The big questions that she explores are handled with a playful lightness, warmth, wit and irony. Mary-Louise Browne is an established artist with an impressive history of exhibitions and permanent public art works including 'Byword', 2006, a series of nine stone benches running the length of Lorne Street in Auckland and 'Body to Soul', 1996, a monumental stone staircase in Wellington's Botanical Garden. Browne graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree with First Class Honours in sculpture from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 1982.
Text courtesy Bartley & Company Art.
