Don’t let it get you by Mary-Louise Browne for SCAPE Public Art Season 2019

Mary-Louise Browne Closer 2009. Image courtesy of Bartley+Company Art and SCAPE Public Art. Photo by Heather Milne.

Don’t Let It Get You advised Mary-Louise Browne’s neon sign. Is it a self-help book title? A guide to everyday life? In fact it’s an iconic New Zealand film from 1966, a romp of a musical starring the young Howard Morrison and Kiri Te Kanawa at a Rotorua pop and sheep shearing festival. One of only two feature films made in New Zealand in the 1960s, Don’t Let It Get You bursts with optimism in the face of artistic difficulty.

Mary-Louise Browne uses words as found objects, redeploying existing texts – mottos and proverbs, lyrics from songs and lines from movies – to upend cliché and make us look again at sayings we think we know well. Her work reveals language as a tool that shapes power dynamics.

Her neon word-scapes led us through The Crossing, giving out helpful if contradictory advice. Truly Rural declared one, against a backdrop of intense urbanity, while Just Nine Short Words Make Up One Long Line literally stretched out over seven meters. Against the backdrop of a busy shopping complex, Browne’s neon signage played with and subverted the hyperbolic language of commerce.