East England Art
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Julie Cuthbert

Julie Cuthbert is a sculptor and photographer based in Brightlingsea, Essex. She works primarily in steel — often new and reclaimed materials together — making kinetic pieces designed for the outdoors, where weather, light and wind become part of the work. Her sculptural practice is informed by Cornelia Parker, David Smith and Alexander Calder.

Alongside the metalwork, she takes landscape and shadow photography, and has built a body of work around Moverons, an Essex farm she documents in poetry, painting and photographs — mapping, in her own words, “the land with the language of the heart.” Her 2022 piece ‘Doomsday Clock’, a sculpture and sound installation made with sound artist Frazer Merrick, sits alongside two collaborative books: ‘Moverons, an artist’s sketchbook’ and ‘Or Land the Sea’, a photo poem with poet Michael McKimm.

Recent exhibitions include 2D3D at Aldeburgh Gallery (2025), River Stories (2025), ‘Beneath the Clouds’ at Flatford Mill (2024), ‘Brushstrokes’ in Sudbury (2024), and ‘Track Markers’ at Essex Wildlife Trust, Fingringhoe Wick (2023), as well as repeat showings at the Moverons NGS Open Gardens.

Artist Statement

I sculpt in metal using both new and existing materials. I am conscious of an object’s previous use and how I am at once subverting that and giving it a new lease of life.

Work

  • Julie Cuthbert's kinetic steel sculptures installed in a window of the disused Old Debenhams building on Head Street, Colchester, with a passer-by walking down the pavement.

    Photo: Jayne Lloyd / Creative Colchester

  • Close-up of one of Julie Cuthbert's kinetic steel sculptures: a tall assemblage of springs, rusted blades, a gear wheel and reused industrial parts, photographed under a barn roof.
  • ‘Tied to the Mast’ by Julie Cuthbert — a sculpture in steel and iron made from reused parts including rings, a sickle blade and a curved foot-shaped base, on a small plinth.
  • Untitled iron sculpture by Julie Cuthbert (2020), 62 × 48 × 15 cm — an assemblage of reused iron parts including a clamp, threaded rods and a ring, mounted on a steel plate.