For Those Who Care

Summer and who doesn't dream about walks in unspoilt landscapes or of remote beaches, clear water and fine sand. But why travel? It is all here in the miniature worlds the young, Belfast based artist Julie Brown [Julie Miller] created in project space. A beautiful but manipulative small scale world creation.
She installed a fish tank and a square of a landscape, breaking the border between hobby and art and creating a near perfect substitution for the real nature. A beautiful but manipulative small scale world creation, a process which is documented in the photographs. There, war games are played with miniature soldiers and the technicality of the aquarium is revealed; issues Brown researched with hobby groups such as TableTopNorth, a society that plays war and other tabletop games and Bangor Aquarists, a group of fish enthusiasts.

'These hobbies could be said to parallel the process of creating art for exhibition, where the preparation is usually done in a solitary environment and the results are then shown to the group for approval'.