With the poetic statement ‘My art is like the weather’, Brock Enright announces a practice of the kind of vision and scope that I find compelling and inspiring: a perfect storm. Enright maintains a fearless attitude towards the creative act, along with an extraordinary artistic skillset, which enables him to actualise in any artistic medium. He ventures out into territory that reminds me of Miles Davis playing a few notes that can make you cry.
I do not profess to say I understand his work completely; however, it is simple, which is exactly what moves me and draws me to it.
His work is not ‘about something’ but rather is something. It holds fast to the idea that an artistic act is performative in nature. The work that illustrates this best is his ongoing sculpture series Parcells, a word that describes an object ephemera that has been created by an action, not just physical materials.
The thread that is woven throughout Brock’s vast material list and seemingly unrelated works creates a strong webbed system. It is a meshwork for one to explore and meander through. He does this in the hope of continuing the conversation of the creative act and discovering or rediscovering what is overlooked or invisible.
Brock has gained a certain degree of notoriety because of a company that he created as a ‘sculpture’. But his work is much more than just this one thing that has been sensationalised by the media.
In his recent ‘light drawings’, the lines are actually excisions from a mirror’s surface, which makes them negatives. These works carry in them much of what Brock pursues in his work. Almost mystical in their elegance, they are a paradox.
While I see many young artists trying to fashion a truth, Brock’s extraordinary energy and gifts are focused like a laser beam on telling the truth. His various bodies of work can be daunting to penetrate, but given time, one will find through them an artist of great vision and relentless courage.
This article was originally published in the March 2013 issue.
