2025
Exhibition Residencies
Browne's research for the Rhyzom project, 'Lebensreform in Leitrim', is a publication project that investigates the contemporary legacy of recent migrations of people, particularly German, Dutch and Swiss people, to the northwest of Ireland. Her process often derives techniques from documentary genres and ethnographic practices, working from the premise of 'critical proximity', and with this work, she is particularly interested in how actual life practices in Leitrim exist in parallel to representations of the place - Heinrich Boll's Irish Journal; Lovely Leitrim tourist films; lifestyle journalism in The Irish Times.
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.
Past Residencies