British artist’s work to feature at the National Art Gallery
‘Made, Unmade’, an exhibition of artworks by British artist, Julie Brook will take place at the National Art Gallery of Namibia (NAGN) Lower level from 28 June until 28 July.
Julie works with the land, where her response to the forms and materials to hand is expressed through her work.
For 25 years she has roamed, lived and sculpted in a succession of uninhabited and remote landscapes in North West Scotland: Hoy, Orkney; Jura, West coast; Mingulay, Outer Hebrides. Brook studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University.
She has explored the black volcanic desert of central Libya and in the Jebel Acacus mountains in South West Libya (2008/2009) and the semi-desert of NW Namibia (2011-2015) where the nature of light, shadow and structure are expressed in the sculptural forms Brook makes.
Much of her work is transient; temporal, ephemeral and visceral, the sculptures are made of the fabric of the landscape itself. Brook documents these transformations through film and photography which then become the expression of the work.
Her work was recently seen on the BBC4 documentary; Field, Forest and Sky showing her tidal work, Firestack, made on the West coast of North Harris, Outer Hebrides.
In February 2017 she gave a public talk with Raku Kichizaemon XV, Raku teabowl master at MOMAK, Kyoto as part of his retrospective exhibition Cosmos in a Teabowl showing all 15 generations of teabowl makers. This featured in a documentary on NHK news.
In September 2017 she received a research and development award from Creative Scotland and the Daiwa foundation for a 2 year project exploring new work in Lewis and Harris, Outer Hebrides in relation to working in stone quarries in Komatsu, Japan.
