Pauline Brooke

Pauline Brooke staged an exhibition titled ‘Random Sculpture’ in an empty shop on Berwick Street, Soho in London in 1965. G.S. Whittet in Studio International described, ‘the objects as such were found by Pauline Brooke on the floor of her husband’s metal furniture factory, recognised by her as having some intrinsic merit in their design and cleaned, arranged and mounted so that in effect they competed with the deliberately fashioned sculptures by artists who used scrap metal for their own ends.’ In The Times, Edward Lucie-Smith summarises, ‘By selecting this object, and, moreover, by mounting it in such a way that its qualities are emphasized, the artist […] has imposed order where none existed’. The sculpture by Brooke in Kettle’s Yard’s collection was among those listed as part of Jim and Helen Ede’s original gift to the University of Cambridge in 1966, so must have been acquired by Jim Ede, who perhaps found affinity in Brookes work with his own practice of occasionally collecting and displaying more utilitarian objects.