Jurack was originally scheduled to hold a physical exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum in 2020.
When Covid-19 restrictions made the possibility of this less certain, the idea emerged to instead produce a work suited to online exhibition. Jurack has embraced this with Concentration, a film which celebrates the physical act of mark-making for a digital audience.
Created in lockdown, Concentration captures the spirit of single-mindedness required for the process of art making. Using a Chinese Brush and watercolours, Jurack’s focus is on the small acts of the present moment. Concentration is a quiet dance between the freedom of imagination and the realisation of artistic intent.
The film is available to view on the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum website
Brigitte Jurack (born Duesseldorf, 1962) studied at Kunstakademie Duesseldorf, Glasgow School of Art and Chelsea College of Art & Design in London.
As an artist, Jurack looks at the world as it is and tries to make sense of it; her process could be described as picking up what is already out there. The material and non-material outcomes of what actually appears in the studio or exhibition are driven by the desire to create and hold on to the elusiveness of visual sensations.
Jurack has exhibited widely, including Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), European Ceramic Work Centre (Hertogenbosch) and The 3rd World Water Conference (Kyoto). She was the 1993 Henry Moore Sculpture Fellow and was nominated for the 2014 Liverpool Art Prize. In 2019 her work was selected for the international Korean Ceramic Biennial. She is Head of Sculpture and time-based arts and programme leader of Fine Art at Manchester School of Art and has made Wirral her home. Her studio is in Birkenhead, in a converted 19th century Bakery from which she also organises international artists residencies with focus on engaging with the immediate neighbourhood of the Oxton Road Corridor, entitled Translating the street (2016/2019).
Jurack is also founding member of the artists’ group Foreign Investment who have exhibited in Rio de Janeiro, Kiev, Hong Kong, Oslo, Berlin and the Istanbul and Venice Biennials. See www.foreign-investments.com.
