Sarah Browne, ‘Echo’s Bones’ | Aberdeen Art Gallery

We are excited to present a sensory friendly screening of Sarah Browne’s ​‘Echo’s Bones’ (2022) at Aberdeen Art Gallery. The screening will be followed by a presentation from Sarah Browne on the making of ​‘Echo’s Bones’ and a question and answer session. The event will take place in the Seminar room on level 2 of the gallery.

This public screening event is part of a wider professional development programme by LUX Scotland for early career Aberdeen-based artists and curators. The programme includes workshops, screening and discussion events and is supported by Aberdeen City Council Creative Funding.

About the work

Sarah Browne,​‘Echo’s Bones’, (2022). 26 mins

‘Echo’s Bones’ takes its title from an unpublished short story by Samuel Beckett set in Fingal in the 1930s, originally intended to be part of the collection ​‘More Pricks Than Kicks’. Made by artist Sarah Browne with a group of autistic young people in north county Dublin, Ireland, the film is situated in the same geography of the stories — largely along the north Dublin coast, against the backdrop of a Victorian asylum.

The film was developed over two years, initially through a series of online workshops, involving creative writing, acting, composition and filmmaking, and in-depth discussions about autistic representation in film, TV and online. Songs written and produced by the young people largely form the emotional spine of the film, unexpectedly, it turned into something like a musical. Borrowing from the sensibility of Samuel Beckett, autism is not the subject of the film, but a way of sensing the world, questioning ways of being together, and speculating about a shared future.

‘Echo’s Bones’ was commissioned by Fingal County Council under the Infrastructure 2017 – 2021 Public Art Programme.

What I can expect from a sensory friendly screening

The sound level will be reduced

The house lights will be on low (but not full darkness)

The film is 27 minutes long

Audience members are free to stim and move around as they need to. You can leave at any time, and you are welcome to come back in.

The seminar room and nearest bathrooms will be sign posted.

Our schedule for the event includes

2pm – 2.05pm Settling in time

2.05 – 2.15pm LUX Scotland staff will do a short introduction to Echo’s Bones

2.15pm The screening will begin

2.45pm The screening will end

2.45pm Set up for presentation

3pm Artist Sarah Browne will present on the making of Echo’s Bones

3.20pm Time for questions from the audience

3.45pm Coffee and tea are available in the space

4pm Event ends.

Image Description: Three young people sit next to each other on top of large rocks on a coastline. They are dressed in brightly coloured clothes. One in yellow, one in blue and one in pink. The rocks are covered in lichen coloured green, yellow and white. Behind them in the distance are buildings.

Sarah Browne is a visual artist working with spoken and unspoken experiences of knowledge, labour and justice. Her work in sculpture, film and performance – made in collaboration with others – often explores an embodied tension between the said and the unsaid, or what a body knows and what it is told. Significant group exhibitions Browne has participated in include Bergen Assembly: Actually, the Dead are Not Dead (2019) and the Liverpool Biennial, with Jesse Jones (2016). In 2020 she curated TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, with a project titled The Law is a White Dog.