Presentation

In my work, I explore the profound interdependence of all living things, revealing the vitality of an animistic, spiritually-charged parallel world.

My practice encompasses large-scale drawings, photos, metal and bone structures as well as cast sculptures in bronze, Jesmonite and glass. The starting point of new work are natural material, abandoned manmade objects and historic tools, which I remove from their original context. Through this simple process they become spontaneously loaded with history, meaning and imagination, provoking a metamorphic process.

The female and male figure, mammals, insects and hybrids, form the centre of my imagery. I draw on a diverse range of artistic and scientific sources from Norse mythology and the Fertility Cult of the Indus Valley to anthropological studies of sacred objects. The resulting body of work weaves a distinctly personal tale related to the Westphalian landscape where I grew up. My work is about archaism, the paradox of apparent simplicity and underlying complexity.  I want my sculptures to convey a vibrating force in their totemic stillness. Their disturbing beauty create a feeling of ambiguity and challenge, unsettling our perception of the order of the world.

Furthermore, I observe the historically deep emotional connections between human beings and material objects and investigate the process of attachment which can even lead us to project a personified being onto an inanimate thing. Through our modern fixations with technology and virtual reality, the haptic quality of objects and tools has lost their importance. We have inadvertently designed away the more poetic and enduring characteristics of our material culture and developed a throw-away attitude. The studying of the relationship between emotional attachment and the senses, has led me to investigate the roles that touch plays in our everyday interactions with objects and personal well-being.

Uta Brouet

I am interested in making visible what I sense to be present behind the surface appearance of things, by going past the obvious, the pragmatic. Influenced by my upbringing on a farm in Germany I strongly respond to form, texture and colour of organic material like wood, soil, rust, bones. A notion of ‘nobleness’ in disused tools and decaying matter retain my attention. An uprooted tree sits on a reversed metal bucket, eaten away by a rusty hole. These man made objects in their liminal state of being reclaimed by nature serve as a metaphor to the cycle of life, and challenge the supremacy of the human being. 

Initially, handling bark and tree roots informed intuitive structures which inspired the idea of transition and led me to study North European myths and legends, in particular Odin and his shamanic ordeal. By carefully adding and removing elements without altering them I find a naturally balanced and succinct figure which reveals its animistic, archaic power. By oversizing drawings of insects or tools I provoke an enlargement of consciousness and trigger a metamorphic process which in return allows me to construct figures related to the symbolism of the deer in Norse Mythology. Thus a strong, forward-thrusting, naked metal frame supporting deer antlers represents the independence, fortitude and virility of the stag. Softer feminine forms, cast in smooth Jesmonite and translating the idea of fecundity, protection and grace, complete the hybrid figure. They enclose a crystal glass lamp as a symbol for lucidity and rationality (in homage to Joseph Beuys). The lower abdomen becomes a sculpture in its own right, an amber glass vase bearing the symbol of the Fertility Cult of the Indus Valley.

Uta Brouet 
Mail: UB@UtaBrouet.com
Tel: +44 7887852891

Uta Brouet is a sculptor and printmaker, living and working in London and South of France. She grew up on a farm in Germany and had an international career in publishing, communications, marketing and interior design before graduating from Heatherley School of Fine Art in 2012. She was awarded the Heatherley Sculpture Prize in the same year. In November 2015 she has won the “Public Choice” Prize, awarded by the Broomhill Art and Sculpture Foundation. Recent exhibitions include: “Totem” at Poppy and Pierre Salnger Foundation in France,  ‘One and Three’ at KPMG London Headquarters, Canary Wharf; ‘12@Menier’, group show at The Menier Gallery, Southwark, London; ‘London-Berlin - Contemporary Art by Women’ at the German Embassy in London; ‘Landscape and Memory’, Hewer Street Studios London.

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