Alice Browne: Forecast

Alice Browne’s exhibition title, “Forecast”, refers to her interest in the problematic practice of projecting a vision of the future. Alighieri’s ‘seers’ crying into their arse cracks as illustrated by Botticelli, became a catalyst for Browne: “The sinners are caught in a quandary between seeing forwards and walking backwards or walking forwards but always having to look at where they have just been. It begs the question; do we learn more from our past, or by predicting our futures?”

For her exhibition, Browne has developed a new body of paintings which, for the first time in her practice, figuratively reference Botticelli’s illustrations (c. 1485 1500) and Dante’s vision of the ‘malebolge’ – the structure of concentric evil ditches in which the sinners guilty of fraud are punished. The works also gesture towards a more innocent desire to will our own futures through reading star signs or simple gestures such as crossing fingers for luck (also used as a sign of deceit). Working procedurally with layers of paint towards a formally unpredictable outcome, Browne embraces the anxiety of not knowing.

Her paintings describe obscure imaginative spaces, which simultaneously appear to adhere to the rules of gravity and perspective whilst outwardly ignoring them. Boxes, shadows, screens and girders mingle with drips, floating transparent forms and abstract geometric shapes. Her works appear to occupy multiple planes and visual languages, resulting in a complex network of forms that flip between object and image.

On the floor of the gallery is a collection of what Browne describes as her ‘photo objects’. Obscure in their origin, the unplaceable images reference the practice of cleromancy (divination by casting lots, such as dice), sprawling across the gallery floor, awaiting plausible reading.