Visual Art: Buttercup by Sarah Browne at Sirius Arts Centre, audio described and captioned exhibition 30 March to 29 June 2024

This spring, artist Sarah Browne will present her latest body of work, the film Buttercup, with an installation and associated events at Sirius Arts Centre, from 30 March to 29 June 2024.

Sarah Browne’s work is concerned with spoken and unspoken, bodily experiences of knowledge, labour and justice. Buttercup is presented by Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork, with funding provided by the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect Scheme, managed by Arts & Disability Ireland.

Buttercup is a multi-layered film in the form of a poem that focuses on a particular photograph of a child, pictured on a farm with her father and her pet cow. The narrator explores the relationships implied in the photograph, between human and bovine behavior, naming, domestication and wildness. Attending to the materials of these relationships, the farm becomes a site of learning and unlearning. Buttercup is made in close collaboration with audio describer Elaine Lillian Joseph and composer David Donohoe, and in consultation with a forum of people who are blind and visually-impaired.

The 28-minute-long work is shot on 16mm film and also incorporates handmade, cameraless animation on celluloid. It will be presented as an immersive installation in the gallery space. An audio-described version will alternate with a non-audio described version, and captions will be integrated into the presentation.

Sarah Browne was interviewed by The Irish Examiner, EchoLive.ie, and Culture File’s Rachel Andrews to discuss her visual art, the inspiration for Buttercup, as well as the role of audio description and captioning in her work.

The artist, Sarah Browne, says: “Over the last number of years, my work has largely been developed and presented outside of gallery spaces, and it is exciting to bring my practice back to a gallery setting at SIRIUS. Developing the work throughout short residencies in Cobh in 2023, I’ve become more familiar with this very particular setting – facing an island prison – that has seeped into the concerns of the work. This exhibition is part of a longer-form enquiry into the material culture of language, literacy and confinement in development with curator Miguel Amado.”

Miguel Amado, the director of Sirius Arts Centre and the exhibition’s curator, comments: “Supporting Sarah Browne as she engages with Sirius Arts Centre and our environs over such a sustained period has allowed for rich reflection both at an institutional and personal level. Buttercup challenges and critiques conventional modes production and display in the art sector, putting critical dialogue at the core of curation and artistic thinking. This exhibition emerges from thoughtful and timely considerations of accessibility and the role of a gallery in fostering productive relationships with artists and a more inclusive approach to audience development.”

Associated activities will include an in-conversation event with the artist and Kate Strain, curator and founder of Kunstverein Aughrim, on Saturday, 13 April, at 5pm. Kunstverein Aughrim is based in Co. Wicklow and develops collaborations with artists and brings audiences as close to the creative process as possible. Sarah Browne is working with Kunstverein Aughrim throughout 2024.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a text response to Buttercup by Sarah Hayden, writer and scholar in literature and visual culture. From 2019-2023, Hayden led ‘Voices in the Gallery’, a British AHRC Fellowship project about intersections between text, voice and access in contemporary art.

For more information on Buttercup, please visit siriusartscentre.ie

Please note that both the trailer below and the full film contain flashing imagery.

Buttercup

Written, directed and edited by Sarah Browne

Music: David Donohoe

Voice: Elaine Lillian Joseph

Camera: Helena Gouveia Monteiro & Sarah Browne

Field recording & sound design: David Donohoe

Audio description: Elaine Lillian Joseph

Funded by: the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect scheme managed by Arts & Disability Ireland.

Accessibility

Screenings at 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 2:30pm, 3:30pm and 4:30pm will include audio description.

Captions will be integrated throughout the exhibition.

The film contains flashing lights which may not be suitable for photosensitive viewers.

A transcript of the film will be available in the gallery.

Seating is provided in the gallery. Visitors can move around and come and go as they like.

The building has accessibility limitations. There are three steps to the front door, and a temporary wheelchair ramp is available upon request. Toilets are accessed via stairs and are not open to visitors. Public toilets are beside the Titanic Experience, by The Promenade.

Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland concerned with spoken and unspoken, bodily experiences of knowledge, labour and justice. Her practice involves sculpture, film, performance and public projects, often in collaboration with others, and presented in venues that have included a maternity hospital, a former children’s court, and a public leisure centre. Her most recent film is Echo’s Bones (2022), commissioned by Fingal County Council and co-created with autistic young people in North Dublin, responding to the work of Samuel Beckett. She has presented solo exhibitions at institutions such as Marabouparken, Stockholm; CCA Derry~Londonderry; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; and Ikon, Birmingham. She has participated at significant international group exhibitions such as Bergen Assembly and the Liverpool Biennial. In 2009, she co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy. For more information, see www.sarahbrowne.info.

Sirius Arts Centre is a venue in Cobh, County Cork. It approaches art through the lens of society. It facilitates the production and presentation of, and public engagement with, art and knowledge, and offers professional development opportunities to artists and other practitoners through commissions and residencies. Its programme showcases all art forms – visual, performing, live, film, sound, vocal, written, born-digital and beyond – and operates across political, community and/or experimental modes. The programme offers a mix of exhibitions, performances, screenings, events, learning and outreach activities, digital broadcasts, and publications. It concentrates on production through collaborations with artists and communities. Recent commissions and solo exhibitions include the artists Marie Brett, Fiona Kelly, Daniela Ortiz, Karen Power, Frank Sweeney, and Anton Vidokle.

Images courtesy of Sarah Browne and Sirius Arts Centre.