What is it that will last? Julie Brook in the Outer Hebrides

by Annie Coughlan

Julie Brook’s ‘Firestack’ series are love letters to Scotland’s natural landscape. Recently displayed during a retrospective exhibition at Abbot Hall in June 2023, the products of Brook’s time spent on various isles of the Outer Hebrides consider the relationship between the artist and their medium and the notion of land art itself.

The idea for ‘Firestack’ was developed in 1992, during the artist’s second six month period living in isolation of the west coast of Jura. Residing in a natural stone arch at the time, sleeping in a cloth and driftwood structure, Brook was completely integrated into the natural landscape of the area; without technology or even a watch, the artist’s life was directed by the elements. Indeed, the idea for ‘Firestack’ arose from Brook’s desire to combine all four elements into one piece of land art – the collision of fire and water, stone and steam, a ‘passionate expression’ of her relationship with the land. Constructing the work was an act of manual labour, the artist having to learn how to build dry stone walls through observation of her surroundings and trial and error. At low tide, Brook would build up a cylindrical dry stone tower with a cavity at the top filled with driftwood and rope. The fuel would thus be set alight, the artist wading or taking a raft out to refuel the fire until it was entirely engulfed by the sea. There is a seasonal aspect to the work, during a warmer or calmer day, the stack would survive, unveiled during the eventual retraction of the tide, while on a rougher day, the whole edifice would be destroyed. In an 2018 essay on her work, Brook considered the power of the ‘Firestack’ works to be ‘their choreography of time’. The piece can be seen as a measure of the movement of the tide, providing a focal point as which to observe its slow ebb and flow up the beach.

Indeed, Brook’s work occupies a significant position in the dialogue of land art. Simon Groom, co-curator of the recent exhibition, argues that the artist differs from other prominent names working in this area. The pre-existing Scottish landscape remains the focal point of Brook’s work, while the brightness and colour of the flames serve as a vivid visual contrast to their surroundings, it is nonetheless the movement of the sea, edging slowly closer and closer to the top of the stack, the occupies the viewer’s attention, waiting for the moment that the fire is extinguished. The experience of ‘Firestack’ has been documented by various films, the first from the artist’s original experimentation with the idea in Jura, but Brook also returned to the concept in 2015 while working on the west coast of Lewis. Brook’s careful recording of sound for these films, the crackling of the fire and crashing of the waves paralleled with the rhythmic sound of the artist’s own breaths, formulates a sense of unity – encapsulating the manner in which Brook lived and worked to produce such pieces. Indeed, the ‘Firestack’ series are fascinating works of land art that celebrate and explore the beauty and drama of the natural landscape of the Outer Hebrides.

Bibliography

Kings Place, ‘Julie Brook & Robert Macfarlane: Firestacks: Tide, Time and Gravity | Live at Kings Place’, Youtube (18th May 2020).

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f3DIzTjOq4&t=488s>

Thomas, Greg, ‘Julie Brook: What is it that will last?, Burlington Contemporary (21st June 2023): 1-12.