Bodies of Nature

Jala features 'Pine Family 1' by British artist Jacqueline Brown. In her drawings, installations, videos, and sculptures, Brown turns an inquisitive eye on nature and its strange formations. Brown's training as a sculptor emerges at the forefront of her large drawings of conifer trees. The artist takes photographs in the forest of a seemingly infinite hatch of foliage, then "edits" her footage - effectively sculpting the material - into peculiar shapes that are then drawn on paper in painstakingly exquisite detail. Even here, seemingly undisturbed nature is not allowed to rest; rather, it is the artist herself who intervenes, mimicking an act of God through her re-structuring of flora. Through her sculptures, video, and extensive drawings, Brown's voyage as an artist has been spurred on by an inquisitive curiosity as to the ways in which we interact with the world we have inherited. 

Jacqueline Brown (*1982, Oxford, UK) studied at the Royal College of Art in London (MA Sculpture, 2007) and the Winchester School of Art in Hampshire (BA Hons Fine Art Sculpture, 2004). Her work has been exhibited throughout the UK and abroad. In 2007, she was short-listed for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. That year, she also took first prize for short film at the Totnes Short Film Festival. Brown currently lives and works in Berlin.

'Pine Family 1' is accompanied by a Providence store front glass painting from the 1960s. This piece found in a former clothing store downtown shows in a clear geometrical structure the five koshas or bodies of the human nature as defined in the yoga tradition. Body, mind and spirit are interconnected, interrelated and interpenetrating, as it becomes visible in the interwoven grasp on nature in Brown's drawing.