Ethel Brown

Ethel Brown’s installation of images, collectively titled what flows through us, are drawn from the artist’s personal archive of family photographs built over a number of years. For Brown, photography offered the space and time to create while staying present and caring for her children. The artist shares, “making these photographs has also enabled me to seek connection for myself and my children in our province, where we are simultaneously at home, yet forever seen as immigrants.”

Capturing light, touch, comfort and joy, the images explore how the family interacts with each other and their surroundings, both at home and in the natural environment. These in-the-moment images, rooted in the everyday, also speak to broader themes of interconnection on a universal scale. As Brown reflects: “Whether we are individuals, part of a family, from another country, a plant, an animal, or a mineral—we are at our core composed of atoms, a host for the building blocks of all life. Atoms live in our bodies for hours, days, a few years. The atoms that become us have been around from the beginning of time, joining us to this invisible thread that connects to all things past and future.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ethel Brown is a visual artist currently living in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Born in the Philippines, Brown immigrated to the island of Newfoundland in 1987. Her unique visual sensibility and awareness, notably echoed in her work, was a reaction to the experience of this relocation and displacement in her youth. Since 2014 she has been working primarily in the medium of photography. Brown’s photographs are predominantly documentary and storytelling in nature, exploring themes of belonging, home, motherhood, and everydayness. Brown’s work is expansive, yet personal at the same time. She is known for her patience in finding optimal composition, and for capturing organic moments and the ephemeral beauty of natural light. Brown’s work has been exhibited at Eastern Edge Gallery and at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, both in St. John’s.

Project developed with support from Canada Council for the Arts.