Christie Brown's Human Animal Hybrids (2007)
“The body has been represented in two and three dimensions in a variety of media for thousands of years by human beings seeking to communicate a wide range of social, cultural and aesthetic concepts. For artists who deal primarily with the figure it is both an inspiring and daunting heritage. My interest in the body is either as a means of discovery of our own identity and sense of self or as an exploration of the unknowable and uncontrollable Other.” - Christie Brown, 1999 -
This year the annual CoCA lecture has delighted us with the presence of Christie Brown, one of the best-known English contemporary ceramic artists. The event was titled ‘Casting About: re-searching through practice’ which I found significant because it pointed to Brown’s interest in exploring ceramics in connection to different artistic practices. Through this lecture the artist has introduced the audience to her works and exhibitions in a very singular way, presenting her art as a combination of her artistic interests, both focusing on the various references implied in her artworks and on the importance of drawing as a support and exploration of the three-dimensional.
For Brown, drawing is a passion and a way to take visual notes of the complexity of the human body; a method of seeing the inside of the form more deeply. Drawing is a guidance and inspiration for her sculptures and it enables her to transfer energy and personality visually. Starting from these reflections on drawing and referring to various artists who’ve influenced her, Brown has successfully coped with long-standing issues concerning the relationship between two and three-dimensional works of art and the way we can exhibit them alongside one another. A significant example of this has been her recent exhibition at the Institute of Archaeology ‘Collective Traces’. In this show, Brown decided to display her ceramics and drawings next to ancient Egyptian art, hence raising other controversial questions regarding the communication between contemporary and ancient art. Egyptian art is one of her main sources of inspiration and we can observe this by studying her hybrid half-human, half-animal figures, which remind us of Egyptian divinities. Nowadays, these creatures are not seen anymore as gods but as something uncanny which both attract and frighten us. The animal is the expression of the Other, the unknown. From this perception Brown developed a keen interest in Freud’s psychoanalysis. Her sculptures are like dreams distorted in scale, proportion and perspective through the use of collage. This juxtaposition is increased by the use of clay mixed with other materials, while the sense of the fearful is intensified by the potentially infinite repetition of her works through molding. Thus, these daunting figures seem to belong to a fantastic world and I believe that this is why the fascination they evoke is so powerful.
To conclude, I would like to insist on the importance of Brown’s work in dealing with critical artistic issues concerning the relationship between the ancient and contemporary, drawing and sculpture, dreams and reality, and the way in which it can effectively explore art and its mediums. I believe her work has the potential to open new and interesting fields of research within artistic practices and the history of art as a whole.
Lea Marrazzo
Egyptian statue of Bast the Cat Goddess
Christie Brown's The Uncanny Playroom (2010)