Iona Brown
Iona Brown questions our human relationship of attractions and curiosities in nature, while maintaining reference to forms that refer to the human condition.
About
Iona Brown is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sculpture. Her installations portray spaces of beauty and brutality, uncertainty and vulnerability, which one may feel uncomfortable or enticed to witness.
Brown questions our human relationship of attractions and curiosities in nature, while maintaining reference to forms that refer to the human condition.
Inspired through her connection with the practicalities and aesthetic pleasures of nature. Her practice involves high levels of collecting, organising, embedding and at the forefront, an eye for aesthetics. Memento Mori and the continuum of materials pose an essential element to her practice.
Through the mediums of bronze, taxidermy, flora, bird eggs, pearls, clay, metal, concrete and found objects, Brown explores and evolves her practice through displaying objects of unworldly desire, controlling this desire with a level of uncertainty and curiosity. Approaching various techniques of brutality with a conscious level of gentleness. Encapsulating fragments of nature in a space between comfort and fragility. Heightening our curiosities and our yearn to touch.
Elucidating our internal balance in relation to desire and aesthetics, evoking both unease and awe. In forms which become questioning, educating, distasteful and alluring all at once.
Brown’s works have been selected by several successful artist bodies, including the Royal Scottish Academy, Visual Arts Scotland and the Society of Scottish Artists.
Nature's Mutation
Conflict of life and death is found in this piece. Presenting a period of time and decay. Bronze casting the deer legs feels like a different form of taxidermy and preservation.
Digest
Rejection from the body. An element of control caused by a lack of control. A capsule of guilt and natural disgust. A physical form which forever holds a transition of time, decay, preservation and manipulation.
Inside-Out. Comforting The Internal, External, Uncertain and Certain
Pushing the boundary between the soft and the hard, forms an object and space which can be seen as both inviting and unsettling. Both containing and bounded by space, the nest owns warmth and coldness at once, captured in a threshold between disturbance and solitude. The period of transition conveyed within this piece, brings forth a passing of time and moments of stillness. Exploring the imbalance and vulnerability of living things.
Something I Will Lose and Something I Will Carry
Intuitively made relating to growth and the female form. The carving of the sculpture suggests something is missing and has been removed, exposing the internal hollowness which lays beneath. The object appears to beg for space but also seeks comfort in its exposure.
Salvaging What Was Once Overlooked From Interruption
Surviving in an inevitable space of change and potential destruction. Outcomes are looming which are both predictable and unpredictable.
Starling
The stillness is unnerving and the silence is deafening. The work is both inviting and unsettling. As onlookers, we come to realise our privilege in witnessing such secrets, only allowed by the presence of death.
Support this graduate
For every view, share and purchase you are supporting me as an artist. For general enquires as well as opportunities or sales please contact me via email.
ikhbartist@gmail.com
Upcoming Exhibitions:
New Contemporaries 2023, The Royal Scottish Academy