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Staff Profile

Irene Brown

Professor of Contemporary Art Practice

Background

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 supervise PhD students on a range of topics related to installation and welcome inquiries from prospective PhD applicants interested in my fields of specialism. 

 

Roles and Responsibilities

MFA and PhD admissions.

Qualifications
1985-87 Reading University, MFA.
1980-83 Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham. BA(Hons) Fine Art, First Class.

Previous Positions
2007 Senior Lecturer in Fine art and Sculpture (full time) Wolverhampton 
University 1987 – 94 Studio Demonstrator/Lecturer in Sculpture, (full time) Newcastle upon Tyne University1994-

Esteem Indicators

External Examiner for Nottingham University Fine Art BA (2011- 2014)

Validation Panel Member for the Open University – Taunton Fine Art BA (2013)

External Advisor for the University of Salford, BA Visual Studies (2016).

External Examiner for University of Chichester MFA (2017- 2021)

External Examiner for Wolverhampton University  Fine Art BA UG (2019- 23)

External Examiner for Leeds University Art and Design BS (2020-24)


Co-Investigator, Panegyric Panorama. (2015).  Large Grant AHRC funded project, The Poetics of the Archive: Creativity and Community Engagement with the BloodAxe Archive, Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.

 

Phantasmagoria Electric (2014) Installation, exhibited as part of the ‘Twice Upon a Time: Magic, Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of the Senses’, Centre for Fine Art Research, School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design. 

 

Recall (2012-14) Member the international interdisciplinary (Art, Architecture and Archaeology) research project, funded by the European Union and led by Politecnico di Milano, looking at interpreting ‘difficult heritage’ sites from WWII in Europe.  Ran workshops and a public art competition for international, cross-disciplinary art, architecture and archaeology teams of young professionals in Venice and Rome, Italy, Falstead, Norway, Amsterdam and Berlin.

 

Working Wonder Conference (2013) – organized a one-day interdisciplinary conference at Newcastle University investigating the circumstances and motivations for the re-emergence of wonder in contemporary artistic practice and discourse. 

 

Creating a Context (2012-14) Erasmus IP funded by the British Council. Organized and ran an International, cross-disciplinary Intensive Project for Postgraduate students in Art and Architecture involving seven Universities across Europe, Academics and 60 Students at a two week summer school; 2012 in Bologna Italy, 2013 in Duisburg, Germany and 2014 in Krakow, Poland.

 

Selected Commissions and Awards and residencies:

2016    Meeting Point (View to the Past), Artist residency and installation, Thackray, Medical Museum, Leeds.

2015    ‘Electric?’  Residency, Gallery FOE 156, Munich, Germany.

2015    Gallery of Wonder on Tour – collaboration with Arts & Heritage. Exhibition Toured Northumberland agricultural shows, summer 2015. Funded by Arts Council England, Northumberland County Council, Berwick Visual Arts and Newcastle University NICAP

2015    Folly: Hall of Mirrors – Installation commissioned by the National Trust fo Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal, North Yorkshire, UK.

2015    Locomotion, installation, Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle upon Tyne, video work made for Spineless the first major natural history exhibition at the museum since it reopened in 2009. 

2013    International Research Fellowship at the Bakken Museum of Electricity and Mesmerism, Minneapolis, USA

2013    Fulmination – Installation commission for the National Trust at Cragside House, Northumberland as part of the ‘Building Dreams 150 year anniversary celebrations.

2008-9 Artist in residence at the Great North Museum: Hancock. Newcastle upon Tyne

  

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2017    Origin - Artistic Encounter, Group exhibition, The Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2017    A Scientific Encounter: on Interobjectivity, Group exhibition, Montpellier University Medieval Medical Libraries: 2 rue de l’École de Médecine, 34000 Montpellier

2015    Panegyric Panorama. Sculpture/video- exhibited as part of the ‘Poetics of the Archive: Creative Community Engagement with the Bloodaxe Archive, an A&H research council project at the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts in the ExLibris Gallery, Newcastle University, UK.

2015    A Foreign Encounter.  Group exhibition, Munich, Germany: Galerie Foe, 1

2014    Phantasmagoria Electric.  Installation, exhibited as part of the ‘Twice Upon a Time: Magic, Alchemy and the Transubstantiation of the Senses’, Centre for Fine Art Research, School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, UK.

2013    Returning to the Philosophers’ Table, two installations at the Literary and Philosophical society, Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

2015    ‘Electric?’  Gallery FOE 156, Munich, Germany.

2010    The Realm of possibilities, Installation, inaugural exhibition to launch the Gallery of Wonder.

2009    Wielding Wonder – Photography Exhibition, Great Exhibition Hall, Great North Museum: Hancock

 

Selected Publications and Articles:

2020    Post-Specimen: Object Encounters Between Art, Science and Curating. Chapter for book: The Scientist and the Magician. Intellect Books ISBN 9781789383119

2017    View to the Past: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2017) Published Conference paper: BCS The Chartered Institute for IT.  ISBN978-1-78017-399-3

2016    Wonder in Contemporary Artistic Practice. Book, Publisher Routledge.  Co Editor and author with Dr Christian Mieves.

https://www.routledge.com/Wonder-in-Contemporary-Artistic-Practice/Mieves-Brown/p/book/9781138855816

2015    Zetesis - International Journal for Fine Art, Philosophy and the Wild Science. Chapter in Vol. 2. Published by Centre for Fine Art Research, School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design. 

2015    The Poetics of the Archive, catalogue published by Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.

2011    Sixth International Conference on the Arts in Society, Conference paper, Berlin.

2009    The go between, conference paper, Cardiff University and City Museums. 

2006    Book - Commissions in the North East of England 2003-2007 – Arts Council Pub.

2003    Book - Commissions in the North of England – Arts Council Pub.  ISBN 0-7287-0937-6

2000    Citation - Public Sculpture of Northeast England- Paul Usherwood, Jeremy Beach and Catherine Morris. ISBN 0-85323-625-9

                          


Research

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)


Current Work

Gallery of Wonder on Tour was a major touring exhibition of newly commissioned artworks by leading contemporary artists traveling to county fairs and small rural shows in Northumbria. A mobile art gallery housed in a large, customised tent, travelled to seven Northumbrian venues during Summer/Autumn 2015. Tracing the historic link between the Wunderkammer and travelling curiosity shows, the Gallery of Wonder on Tour project re-examined the fairground sideshow – a dwindling part of Britain’s cultural heritage – as the locus for wonder and a new type of venue for contemporary art. Identifying some of the fundamental properties of the cognitive ‘passion’ of wonder, enduring features of the object of wonder, and devices for arousing wonder, Brown examines their application in the contemporary artworks selected and commissioned for the Gallery of Wonder on Tour.


In 2017 I wrote and co edited (with Dr Christian Mieves) Wonder in Contemporary Art Practice, a book Published by Routledge as part of their Advances in Art and Visual Studies series.  The book addresses the issue that wonder has an established link to the history and philosophy of science, however, there is little acknowledgement of the relationship between the visual arts and wonder. It presents a new perspective on this overlooked connection, allowing a unique insight into the role of wonder in contemporary visual practice. Artists, curators and art theorists give accounts of their approach to wonder through the use of materials, objects and ways of exhibiting. These accounts not only raise issues of a particular relevance to the way in which we encounter our reality today but ask to what extent artists utilise the function of wonder purposely in their work. Reviewer Christopher Smith, editor of the Journal of Visual Arts states 'Brown and Mieves bring a much neglected attention to the topic of wonder and the visual arts in this edited collection of reflexions drawn from a diverse range of distinguished scholars and practitioners....It goes beyond theory into the studio and the role wonder has in the production and reception of visual arts.  This stimulating read is a must for academics and practitioners in the visual arts'. 

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

All undergraduate programmes on the Fine Art BA Stages 1-4.

Postgraduate Teaching

Postgraduate tutees and contribution to MFA seminar programme.
First and Second supervisor for PhD

Publications