Facebook: Jeanné Browne – Ears2ground
Artwork
I am visual artist and writer, and work across drawing, painting, printmaking and collage. My work is concerned with the dynamic poetry of places, wild and subtle – our tuning to them and awareness of the habitats we live within.
As an artist, I operate under the mantle of ‘Ears2ground’, and make my living largely from artist markets.
Earlier work has ranged from bushland management and local plant propagation, to teaching and set/prop design for film & theatre, also bush catering – not all at once, but these engagements commonly overlap. I am presently working as an artist-in-residence at Albert Park College, in Port Melbourne.
My life and artistic practice have been intricately tied to the Goolarabooloo Aboriginal community in remote North Western Australia, over the last three decades of living, listening and working together. My work celebrates the family’s reverence for and commitment to looking after the cultural heritage of the saltwater country of the Broome coast, which in turn, has greatly enhanced my own relationship with that place.
Since 1992, I have kept extensive visual diaries in the vein of old naturalists’ journals documenting the local understanding of place, language and the specific seasonality of the area adjacent to the coast, especially in terms of its traditional food sources, and the functional uses of plants. I’m slowly preparing this archive for some kind of publication.
Witnessing the deep cultural frame of everyday reading of country up north has only served to strengthen my desire to better grasp the layered and largely covered-over ancient past of my own southern Victorian birthplace. Much of my energy is devoted to managing the remnant bushland areas where I live, in both the north and the south. I am most at home in the wilds, so recent extended periods confined to an urban context, I have really struggled with.
The saving graces have been the Merri and the Yarra, the radio, and my vegie garden.
Now, finally, we can return to live music. All I can say is, Halleluiah!
Instagram: @ears2ground
Facebook: Jeanné Browne – Ears2ground
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