Julie Brook and Duncan Chisholm in conversation about the Scottish landscape and how it inspires their practices through visual art and music respectively. Brook responds directly to the environment making large scale sculptural works, Chisholm immerses himself in the landscape to create his musical compositions. This event will feature extracts of film and live music to expand on their processes.

What is it That Will Last? the current exhibition on the Mezzanine floor of Kings Place, offers an insight into the extraordinary work of Scottish land artist Julie Brook. Capturing the sculptures she creates in wild and inaccessible locations around the globe through film, photography and drawing, this exhibition explores Brook’s deep and immersive relationship with each landscape and the natural materials she uses. Brook is a British artist who for 30 years has roamed, lived and sculpted in a succession of uninhabited and remote landscapes in north west Scotland: Hoy, Orkney; Jura, West coast; Mingulay and North Harris Outer Hebrides. Brook studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University. She has explored the black volcanic desert of central Libya and in the Jebel Acacus mountains in south west Libya (2008/2009) and the semi-desert of NW Namibia (2011-2015) where the nature of light, shadow and structure are expressed in the sculptural forms Brook makes. More recently Brook has been working in stone quarries in Japan in relation to developing her tidal work, Firestacks in The Hebrides. The sculptural work is often transient in nature, inspired by and made from the materials of the landscape itself. Brook documents these transformations through film and photography which then become the expression of the work. She has recently been working in the marble Quarry La Cava di Querciola in Carrara, Italy. In May 2023, Brook opened a major exhibition at Abbot Hall, Kendal, UK with Lakeland Arts, followed by an exhibition at Komatsu Museum, Japan in June 2023.

Duncan Chisholm is one of Scotland’s most recognised and accomplished fiddle players and composers. With a strong personal interest in and connection to the Highland landscape that so deeply inspires him, Duncan has now recorded a suite of musical masterpieces influenced by Scotland’s wild places. ‘At the heart of these recordings is being true to yourself’ Duncan says… ‘For me it’s about resonating outward how you feel in your heart and mind when looking at a landscape. This could be a joyous feeling, it could be trepidation or perhaps complete peace. I think the music connects with people because if you are true to your own feelings in the creative process other people understand as they have felt it too. All art has the power to move us but I believe that music alone has the power to transport us to another place or to a different time.’ Both of Duncan’s last two albums Sandwood (2018) and Black Cuillin (2022) won Album of the Year at the Scots Traditional Music Awards. To take listeners to Sandwood and the Black Cuillin, Duncan created soundtracks that were cinematic, epic and expansive in nature, music that would justifiably convey the feelings people might have when they are in those landscapes.

This event will last approximately 90 minutes, without an interval.