Christie Brown

"While exploring the significance of continuity and the relevance of archaic artefacts to a contemporary artist through residencies at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and Hunter College, New York, my recent sculpture references museum artefacts and explores the relationship between humans and animals through symbolic representation. Inspired by archaeology and its parallel with psychoanalysis, as a means of discovering and preserving knowledge through the uncovering of fragments, the work alludes to the powerful charm of animal deities within a range of cultures.  Freud possessed a large number of figurative antiquities and he used the image of a fused human and animal to describe the way two dream images can be condensed together. My current work builds on this interest in the human/animal hybrid, reflecting our need to project a variety of emotions and ideas onto the animal world, which we simultaneously both revere and exploit."