Jenny Brown - Sausage Gallery

Sausage Gallery is almost certainly one of the smallest gallery spaces in Australia—essentially a single glass-fronted display window functioning as an installation space. Its extremely reduced scale forces the visitor to engage with the work in an unusually direct and intimate way.

Yellow Journalism by Jenny Brown is a politically charged installation addressing misinformation, propaganda, and the historical roots of media distortion—particularly in relation to wartime narratives.

The title references the term yellow journalism, originally used to describe sensationalist reporting associated with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. According to Brown’s accompanying text, excerpts from a film biography of Hearst and imagery linked to political cartoonists are interwoven with contemporary references. 

Elizabeth went o the show in her car and took the photos. From a distance the iconography of the show nis intriguing due to the presence of the Bayweuz Tapestry, a sort of embroidered document of the 11th C made following the Norman invasion of thed British Isles.

Of course it is difficult at this remove to know what the tapestry meant for people living at the time. But it is also difficult to know what Americans in the final years of the 19th C thought of the yellow journalism pushed by rich American businessmen. "Giallo" is also used in Italian (it means "yellow") to describe pulp fiction particularly crime fiction, and refers to the discoloured cheap paper used for such novels.

Anyway like I said it is difdicult at this remove to know what was really going on in Katoomba. There seems to have been:

• A bright yellow vacuum cleaner, placed prominently at the front of the display, suggests domesticity interrupted by conflict or deception.
• A cluster of bent metal coat hangers, suspended overhead and holding small wrapped chocolates, creates a chaotic and uneasy structure—possibly referencing the fragility of truth.
• A broken candle arrangement, which resembles a cracked egg, introduces a symbolic note about destruction or rupture.
• A white mug printed with the phrase
• “A single mug could hold all the nuclear fuel needed to power your entire life”
• connects personal scale to global-scale danger.
• A stack of military-style metal ammunition boxes reinforces the exhibition’s reference to war and militarisation.
• A half beach umbrella draped with popcorn garlands evokes a surreal holiday scene contaminated by conflict.
• A small yellow cabinet with a monitor on top, showing video clips performed by the artist’s husband and son, portrays reenactments of media figures shaping false narratives.
• A textile panel resembling a section of the Bayeux Tapestry (as noted in the wall text) situates the conversation within the long history of visual storytelling and propaganda.

Again it is hard to know if the installation was successful at this remove, both in space and becasue I didn't go to the Bluw Mountains myself.