Jurack, B., 2022.

Fieldnotes

HOME is delighted to present [Fieldnotes], a solo exhibition by artist, maker, educator, and climate activist Brigitte Jurack. This is the artist's largest solo show to date bringing works together produced in the UK, Spain and India in the last 5 years. Through a multimedia art practice that spans ceramic sculpture, drawing, collaborative happening and video her work stems from interests in craft, labour, environmental sustainability, mythology and fables, as well as speaking to the extraordinary current times.
The key works in the exhibition will include [Best done in winter (2021)], a workshop and learning area for skep making. These straw beehives used in medieval farming, superseded by modern day box hives, are now classified as an endangered craft; visitors to the gallery will be invited to learn the ancient craft during weekly workshops. The work expands her interests in beekeeping, pollination and food production; and the threat of industrial scale agri-chemical farming on biodiversity, the importance of crop rotation and interdependency of species.
Spring (Los Gázquez),2018 and Wadi Walks, cites can dream (2022), references the different ways in which water has become an increasingly scarce natural resource. Produced in Joya, one of the most arid landscapes in Europe, the works were produced on farmland where demand of water has exceeded supply, and due to climate change and decreased rainfall, can no longer operate. Here, Jurack has documented (playful) collaborative happenings with students, conceived not as performances but intuitively choreographed actions in a homage to water reimagining our relationship to land(scape).

Inspired by biological specimen drawing, From distance you are so beautiful (2021-) is a body of work started during the Covid 19 lockdown. Practiced as an exercise or meditation in looking, drawings of rocks and fungi depict forms or landscapes stripped back to their abstract elements as a tool for connecting to the land. A series of photographs documents watercolour mark-making on rocks in a dry riverbed, playing with geometric micro structure and optical illusions through colour, shape and repetition; a process of negotiating shape-shifting natural forms soon to be washed away by the rain.

Jurack has created a space for visitors to draw or paint on a range of natural objects to explore the relationship of form and space in 3 dimensions, embracing chance and bringing a heightened sense of self.
Meanwhile, Scavengers (monkeys, foxes,crows) (20 18-21) developed in India and the UK populate different spaces throughout the gallery. These ubiquitous, often anthropomorphised animals are significant in both cultural and religious symbolism. Known for their intelligence, wit and ability to adapt to and learn new tools, they populate urban spaces where concrete and wilderness merge, and where forgotten urban spaces can sometimes host greater biodiversity than industrial farmland.
At a time when we have been required to make significant and once unimaginable changes to our lives, this work highlights the importance of everyday creativity, fresh air, access to greenery in nurturing our mental wellbeing, Jurack's exhibition urges us to consider our individual relationship to the natural environment, climate change in shaping a new future.