Jurack, B., 2025.

Rising darkness

Artist Brigitte Jurack allows her artistic practice to be challenged by current affairs, literature, landscape and history and when working in the studio, she remains restless, always on a lookout for different materials, processes and forms.

In spring 2022, a few months into the invasion of the Ukraine by the Russian Army, writers across eastern Europe expressed their fears, but hoped for a quick end to the war. In 2025, three years later, the war continues.

Novelist Herman Hesse (1877-1962) wrote numerous articles during the first and second World Wars warning against the self-perpetuating destruction machinery of war. Put simply, in Hesse's words war prevents humans, the environment and all species from living together harmoniously with mutual understanding and love.

Jurack developed this new work during artists' residencies in Switzerland, Austria and Latvia, engaging with memories of military occupations, imperial landgrabs and land reclamations.

Collecting the ash of burnt Willow and Hazel trees, Jurack ground it down and mixed it with Latvian linseed oil (pressed from flax seeds), hand-making the material for the ghost-like drawings on display. Subtly referencing restored wall paintings in from the Herculaneum in the shadows of Vesuvius and much-admired Japanese paper wall screens, the panels work as a pictorial lament in fourteen verses. As the charcoal is rubbed in by hand, the uneven surfaces reveal slowly eroding images of grief and uncertainty. A collapsed ceiling, a single dim light, Hydra, ripped wallpaper and popular first names.

The cases display a selection of objects, books and writing, including some from the Victoria Gallery and Museum's archive, such as the python skeleton and a copy of Olaf Stapledon's Circular Letter for Peace (1936). The exhibition is commissioned and supported by Liverpool Independents Biennial.