‘When I’m asked about the language of my work, I see it as both a response to my environment, and the expression of the environment’s effect on me. It’s a process, a rhythm which I initiate, but as it gets more involved, it begins to influence the terms.’
Julie Brook RSA (Elect) is a British artist based in northwest Scotland who makes sculptural work outdoors in the landscape, responding to a variety of environments: the deserts of Libya, Syria and northwest Namibia; Hoy, Orkney; Mingulay; and the west coast of Jura, Scotland.
Over the last decade she has been making work in stone and marble quarries in Japan, Cumbria and Italy, in contrast to her earlier work on a remote coastlines in the Outer Hebrides and the cold desert of Upper Mustang, Nepal.
Her sculptural works are most often the means for experiencing the more transient and invisible forces fundamental to our existence - light and darkness, tides and gravity, time and the four elements. It is these fleeting and cyclical moments that lie at the core of her practice. Drawing, painting, photography and collaboration are an integral part of expressing the work and bringing it to an audience through outdoor public works, exhibitions and workshops.
In 2023-24 Brook had major solo exhibitions at Abbot Hall, Kendal; Komatsu City Museum, Japan; and Pangolin, King’s Place, London. Lakeland Arts commissioned out of the ground, a thread of air, a large-scale sculptural work for the deer park at Holker Hall. Lund Humphries published What is it that will last? looking at Brook’s land and tidal art with essays by celebrated British writers Robert Macfarlane and Alexandra Harris, curator Simon Groom and teabowl master Raku Kichizaemon XV・Jikinyū. In May 2025, Brook created a new public commission, Tide Line, on the Fife Coastline, Scotland. Brook’s work has featured in a number of documentaries including the BBC 4 documentary Forest, Field and Sky presented by Dr James Fox.
Brook is currently developing new sculptural and performative projects in Italy and Japan. Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh have invited Brook to collaborate with them on a contemporary tapestry, and Fife Contemporary have invited her to research different environments in preparation for an exhibition in 2028/29, alongside the development of a new outdoor sculptural work.
