Contextual art - landscape

Julie Brook (b. 1960) is a British artist who works in a variety of mediums which are strongly connected to the landscape.  She studied art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. She has lived and worked on Hoy in Orkney (1989), on the west coast of Jura (1990-94) and Mingulay in the Outer Hebrides 1996-2011). She currently lives on Skye. More recently she has been working in different parts of the desert in Libya. She makes large scale sculptural work outside using different materials using photography and film as part of her process of working.

 
In the 1990’s she spent 2 years living in a cave on Jura. She wanted to create a type of art that encapsulated the elemental forces of fire, stone and water. And from that came her fire stacks. She built dry stone column bases at low tide on the beach. These would take several days to build as she could only make them when the tide was low. Then she stacked wood on it and lit it. As the tide came in there would be an island of fire and stone on the sea, with the flames reflecting and rippling on the waves and combining with the light of the sunset. It has been described as Julie marking rhythm and time and with her working and inhabiting the landscape she is looking for a kind of purity. Julie is creating something ancient, this could have been done in the stone ages, it involves no modern materials or tools – just hard work. However it is also very beautiful and a viewer can have a significant emotional response to it.

 
In conversation with Dan Richards she was asked how much the stacks were biographical. She said she was absolutely in her element doing them – she feels completely herself when she does them. She was living in solitary circumstances in Jura and when she discovered them she felt she was on to something. She has a hunger to make and build something. She felt the stacks reflected the purity of life in Jura.

She finds the size and scale of a process is very intuitive and she quickly identified where and what size she would locate the stacks. She had other things to consider, e.g. sea swell and undercurrents which impact on the structure.

She would sometimes make them in the middle of the night which helped her feel even more connected to something ancient. Wading around in the water in the dark or gloom gave her this feeling.

Much of the fire stack creation seems a very personal process in the sense that Julie got intense positive feelings from the process. The lighting of the stacks are documented for a wider audiences.

Julie likens it to her time in Libya where, although the scenery is very different from Scotland, it installed that same visceral feeling in her that she got from Jura and Mingulay.

 
I chose to look at Julie Brooks because I want to take the family to Jura for our holiday this year, however when I explored her more, I could identify with the feeling a landscape and environment can create in you. There are specific areas of Scotland where I can get this overwhelming feeling of emotion and I have a desire to bottle it up to keep it – generally in something creative. I haven’t managed to find a way of doing that yet to a satisfactory level – maybe I should start building fire stacks. I have an affinity with stone and water however I am a bit wary of fire. Maybe I should consider expressing my feelings using water, stone/earth and the wind (air).  Weather evokes strong feelings in me. I am beginning to rabbit on however Julie Brook’s work has made me think…



Andy Goldsworthy (b. 1956) is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings.

His parents were Methodists and instilled a hard work ethic in him. He has likened the repetitive quality of farm tasks to the routine of making sculpture – “a lot of my work is like picking potatoes; you have to get into the rhythm of it”. (I used to go an pick tatties every October holidays so I know what he means!)

The materials used in his art often include brightly coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs and thorns. This list is reminiscent of what nursery children often use in their art! Many of these mediums are very time limited.

Goldsworthy is generally considered the founder of modern rock balancing something that I have attempted. For his works that only last for a brief period of time he uses only his hands, teeth and found tools to create his artwork, for his permanent structures he has used some machine tools.

Photography has an important role in Goldsworthy’s art given a lot of it is transient.

Goldsworthy is inspired by the Cumbrian landscape including the dry stone dykes. Goldsworthy transformed 46 disused sheep folds into beautiful sculptures. Much of this project blended agriculture and culture. This sort of art isn’t immediately accessible to people given its location – random places around Cumbria.

 
As Goldsworthy doesn’t need anything when he does his ephemeral pieces, other than himself and any materials lying around, this means he can create without planning in advance – he can make things as he is moved to make things. He accepts his artworks will change and decay over time and he thinks it is important to realise that not a lot of things in life will last. He said that in the early days a lot of his work was about collapse and decay, but now he considers some of the changes too beautiful to be called decay.

 A lot of his artworks are not out the reach of the average person - it is the imagination and creativity the average person may be lacking, and dry stane dyking skills may be useful.