JULIA BROOKER : ACRYLIC ON ALUMINIUM

5 - 28th February 2015

Showing alongside Clare Bigger in our main space this month is Julia Brooker, an abstract artist specialising in painting directly onto aluminium sheets with acrylic paint. We have been showing her work for many years and furnished a large number of corporate spaces with it.

Detail of Fair Isle, showing the surface of the painting

Julia is interested in the materiality of paint and the way that the aluminium she uses as a canvas reflects light through the veils of transparent paint. The effects produced by the interaction of the intensely coloured paint and reflective surface produce a visceral “hit of colour, ” which can be very effecting.

Julia Brooker, Jungle

Schopenhauer, one of her main theoretical inspirations, calls this feeling the “aesthetic experience,” a momentary “release,” from everyday life which art can provide.  Her work is about the immediate sensorial impression which colour and form can create. A certain type of sensation which is separate from life and transports us to another place.

Julia Brooker, Filligree

Colour is of particular importance to Julia. Her palette is vivid, and in most cases bright. Each painting has a focused use of colour, carefully chosen for maximum impact. Some works, such as Sweet Marie (below) are so intense that they suck all the light in around them, stealing attention from their surrounding paintings.

Julia Brooker, Sweet Marie

When we were hanging the exihibition we often ran into great difficulty with works like this because of their attention stealing nature. It often felt unfair to place one painting which was loud and focused next to another which was more subdued and ethereal because of the habit of the louder works had of overwhelming their quieter neighbors.

Julia Brooker, Syracuse

Julia Brooker is a great believer in the importance of the craft of painting, something which we at Curwen Gallery share. She values traditional notions of beauty in painting which is something that she comments is currently an “unfashionable belief”. These ideas are of great importance to an understanding of her work. There is no particular ‘meaning’, either implicit or explicit. Appreciation of these paintings is confined to the aesthetic experience that is felt by the viewer directly.

For more information on the work included in this exhibition see the gallery website.