I am a sculptor and site–specific installationist. My research and practice is engaged with wonder, focusing on the history and philosophy of science, specifically cabinets of curiosity (wonder cabinets), investigating the threshold between aesthetic and scientific realms. I work directly in response to place, usually a museum or heritage site, using a broad range of media including sculpture, video, virtual reality and augmented reality.
I have supervised five PhD’s to successful completion and am currently supervisor for five PhD students across a range of topics related to installation, ecology and history.
Research Interests
In 2010 I established the Gallery of Wonder as a discussion point and exhibition facility for research into the evocation of wonder through visual display. Building upon research outcomes of the GoW project, I continue to explore the potential of art to reinterpret and represent historical information in a manner that engages and stimulates ‘wonder’ in the viewer, producing new artworks for specific sites of historical and scientific interest. These temporary site-specific installations provide alternative approaches to conventional methods of informational display, stimulating debate and encouraging museums and heritage sites to explore the potential of art to attract and expand their audiences.
‘Brown explores the curiosity, wonder and even terror that accompanied scientific experiments from the seventeenth- to the nineteenth centuries. In her work, we see that the Enlightenment commitment to objective and universal truths, and to uncovering nature’s ‘secrets’, were only ever partial, and accompanied by darker impulses. Those things invisible to us – the microscopic life and the stars beyond our sight, and the electricity that is invisible, inaudible, and untouchable – are not ‘objects of knowledge’ we can safely command. They are both Other to us, and able to exert forms of power over us, rather than vice versa’. (A. Robinson NGA)