The exhibition is the outcome of a two-year process between Julie Brook and Dovecot Studios. The work in the exhibition arises from Brook’s expeditions to Libya and Namibia in the last five years, and is a reflection on how to reframe her powerful land based work into gallery spaces. For Dovecot, the process of collaboration between artist and maker is at the heart of the Dovecot ethos. For Brook, the challenge has been to bring work from wild remote places and put it into a different context. She has chosen film to enable a more visceral experience of the work. The North and South Galleries show Brook’s carefully sequenced, and immersive films, which guide you through these spaces. Her responses to the landscape are about realignment of material, form, space and light: a continual balance between what is made and not made. made, unmade also features a series of drawings in the South Gallery Annexe and upstairs Meeting Room, alongside the collaboration between the artist and the Dovecot weavers, inspired by Brook’s work: Suspended block. This new handmade gun-tufted rug is one of the largest rugs ever made at Dovecot. Young Films have provided creative and technical support for all aspects of the film production.
Julie Brook has been in dialogue with the Dovecot weavers since the beginning of 2011. They wanted to understand each other’s working processes and share their practices. They were interested in how the weavers could respond to the tactile and luminous quality of the pigment on paper so the resonance of colour was sustained in a woven piece. This inspired a period of mutual exchange where the development of the drawings and successive tufted and woven samples influenced one another. Their exploration of textures, colours, tonal values, scale and technique, enabled the weavers to find ways to emulate the qualities of the pigment, and informed the artist's final series of drawings. The weavers have responded to the formal elements and scale of the work by the artist, but have worked freely and intuitively on the final work.
‘Over the years I have consistently used raw pigment in my drawing and sculptural work. In Namibia I was introduced to the way in which the Himba women use red pigment rubbed onto their skin. This has both an aesthetic and protective value for them. Through an unexpected meeting with three Himba women in Otjize I was able to collect the red pigment with them. We use the same techniques of crushing and grinding the pigment. I use it dry, whilst they mix it with animal fat and aromatic plants.’ Julie Brook March 2013
