Jeanné Browne

As a visual artist, I work across drawing, painting, print-making and collage, often incorporating written strands, and operate a small business under the mantle of ‘Ears2ground’. My work is characteristically concerned with the dynamics of places, wild and subtle – a tuning to them and the habitats we live within. Other occupations have ranged from bushland management and horticulture, to teaching and set/prop design for film & theatre, also bush catering – not all at once, but these engagements commonly overlap. I am Victorian and have had strong links to the back beach coastline locally here all my life, with my family.
My adult life and learning, however, have become closely tied to the Goolarabooloo aboriginal community, in Broome (NW Kimberley), whose land knowledge and relationship remains dynamic and present. In 1992, I was invited through mates to join an RMIT student project documenting the cultural heritage of the Lurujarri coast, north from Broome, under the guidance of traditional custodian, Paddy Roe OAM.
We were to be mapping significant vegetation communities, recording language names, and traditional stories linked to landmarks and places on an 80 kilometre stretch of the Northern Tradition Song Cycle that runs north-south along the coast. The visual diaries I have kept since that time are in the vein of old naturalists’ notes, with a particular interest in the local reading of country, functional plant use, language and the seasonal knowledge of place, particularly in relation to food sources across the year. These early journals have become the launch-pad to a large, on-going body of artwork that includes painting, print-making, collage and large-scale interpretative mural signage on the Dampier Peninsula.

1. (above) Monsoonal Vine Thicket fruits’ (Detail), 2011. Canvas. (mixed media mural on canvas, created with screen-printed stencils derived from botanical drawn records, and further painted detail.)

(From exhibit, ‘The Six Seasons of the Broome Lurujarri Coast’, 2013.)
The images on the lightboxes within this collection are renderings of aspects of each of the six seasons perceived for the Goolarabooloo country north of Broome. They are all composite images of phenomena/food sources characteristic of different times of year, that derive from my personal records over three decades, whose content owes to both teaching and my own observations over time:

2. (above) ‘Wirlburu reef fishers’, 2013. Digital diorama from original artwork, elements printed in 5 layers of acetate within a timber-housed sunlit box.

3. (above) Wirralburu – Lurujarri Gubbin (ditto, as for 2. above)

4. (above) Marul – hot time (ditto, above)

5. (above) Larja – ‘Married turtle’ time, 2013. Digital collage, printed on acrylic face of timber light box.

6. (above) Mangala, Wet season signage from Minyirr Park , Broome, on marine ply.

7. (above) Spinifex Hopping mouse – small woodblock print on paper

8. (above) Bowerbird, ‘Gooly’, Kimberley – mixed media stencil prints & painted detail, on green silk (detail from larger work).

My northern cultural immersion has greatly enhanced my own relationship with both that place and my own Victorian coastal roots. Much of my present energy is devoted to managing the remnant bushland areas where I live, in the south; the subtleties of local habitat dynamics take much of my interest, and underpin in the artwork I remain focused upon. In the mid ‘90’s, I worked at Yarra Bend Park, in Fairfield, as a bushland worker, and artist-in-residence, focused on recording the local seasonal phenomena specific to that riparian bushland:

9. (above) Black Duck, Yarra Bend Park. Mixed media drawing, pen pencil + wash on paper

10. (above) Longneck Tortoise – Yarra Bend Pk. Mixed media drawing, pen pencil + wash on paper

I am presently working as an artist-in-residence at Albert Park College, in Port Melbourne. The woodblock, lino-prints and stencils used derive from drawings made and photos taken, tracking resilient local marine species in Port Phillip Bay that are managing still to reside, despite the pressure of largely urban adjacent edges.

11. (above) Seagrass meadows, sandy shallows and reef, Port Phillip Bay, Vic. (2 details), 2021. Woodblock prints, linocut stamps, screenprint stencils , on pink linen. This mural has been built up in layers, using printing press, hand rollers and cut stencils to mask out underlying areas.

12. (above) ‘Modern midden, Port Phillip Bay – detail, 2021. Printed from collographs made from plastics collected on the shoreline.

I enjoy the platform for conversation with people offered by the various Artists’ markets I participate in, both in Victoria and Broome. For my stalls, I screen-print Tshirts that celebrate local species and habitat, using hand-cut stencils. The following are a few examples:

13. (above) Hooded plover pair, Sorrento, stencil print

14. (above) Stryzleckis Lyrebird, Wonyip, stencil print