2022October 15, 2013, 12:37 pm -- /EPR NETWORK/ -- Rachel Louise Brown is fascinated by the way in which fantasy and myth are woven into reality, creating a visual language for how we experience emotion, what we imagine and how we project ourselves as an image.
The Malevolent Eye is a culmination of the artist's response to unfamiliar places and strangers, a study into subject, location and memory. Through one process Brown shoots at night, alone, capturing the landscape whilst experiencing fear and uncertainty. An imagined gaze watches her alongside the real risk of being caught. It is whilst feeling this unease that the photograph is made; abstracted from reality, turning it into something 'other'. Through a second process Brown casts strangers who become characters in the photographs. The culmination of both processes is a visual narrative born from collaboration.
For the newest work in the exhibition Brown turns the lens up on herself; and is suspended between controlling the image and being controlled by the lens, location and the feeling of being watched. The malevolence experienced has resulted in a series of self-portraits entitled The Self as The Other .
At once an image-maker and director, the artist becomes a kind of demiurge, wielding absolute power. This power is made all the more unsettling by how she creates a fictional world by giving a new twist to the one that already exists; elevating it to the level of the sublime by transforming it into an image, held between the boundaries of the imagination and within the realm of the dreamlike.'
Extract from The Malevolent Eye foreword written by Christian Caujolle
Rachel Louise Brown graduated from the MA photography program at the Royal College of Art, London in 2011, following a residency as part of the prestigious Photo Global initiative at the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has exhibited widely, with shows in London, Liverpool, Copenhagen, Paris, New York, Dallas and Toronto, and has completed residencies in Paris, Niort and New York. In 2010 she was a UK winner of Magenta's Flash Forward Emerging Photographers award and Pour l'Instant Photography Prize. Brown is currently the artist in residence at Pinsent Masons, London.
In addition, she has previously been shortlisted for the Visions of 21st Century Feminism and New Contemporaries awards. Other selected awards include Applied Arts & PDN Emerging Photographer Awards in 2009, Fujifilm Distinctions in 2008, and honourable mentions in both the Fine Art and Deeper Perspective categories at the International Photography Awards, also in 2008. Brown is a visiting faculty member at the New York School of Visual Arts.
Collectors of Rachel Louise Brown's work include Laura Skoler, trustee of the New Museum, New York and Pinsent Masons.
Please join us at the private view of The Malevolent Eye on Saturday, 2 November from 2-6pm, where Rachel Louise Brown will be in attendance and talking in depth about her work, and be one of the first to view this new exhibition.
Exhibiting Artist: Rachel Louise Brown
Exhibition Name: The Malevolent Eye
Start Date: 4 November 2013
End Date: 3 December 2013
Private Viewing: 2 November 2013, 2-6 pm (including an artist talk at 4pm)
Venue: Opus Fine Art, Sheep Street, Stow-on-the-Wold, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Gl54 1AA
Website: www.opus-art.com
Email: enquiries@opus-art.com
Telephone: 01451 870 827
