Carpet for the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2009. Research image at Dublin Castle, c.1970.
Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland. Her practice includes exhibitions, publishing, collaborations and critical writing. She has participated in residencies and artist exchanges in Japan, Iceland, Thailand and the UK. In 2006 she was awarded the apexart international residency in New York. She also collaborates on a body of work with Gareth Kennedy under the name Kennedy Browne, and in 2009 she will co-represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale.
Sarah Browne’s practice implicitly addresses ‘the economy’ as the dominant metaphor for contemporary social and political relations. She is concerned with the creation or documentation of intentional economies and temporary ‘communities’. These small-scale systems tend to form and be formed by forces of intention or desire, and are typically influenced by emotional affects. She often works on a domestic scale, using technologies such as upholstery, knitting, flower-pressing, carpet-knotting and filmmaking (super 8 and 16mm). Browne is interested in forms of non-market exchange such as gift economies, subsistence, subsidies and poaching. The work is often carried out with the participation of a ‘community’ where it is based, or creates a fictional or temporary ‘community’ for itself.
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