Terri Brooks: Brown and Bone

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Brown and Bone

Beige Bands Diptych, 2014, oil and enamel on canvas, 137 x 244 cm

Beige Bands, 2014, oil and enamel on canvas, 151 x 151 cm

Horizontal Lines, 2013, oil and enamel on paper mache on canvas, 91 x 63 cm

Horizontals on Brown, 2013, oil and enamel on paper mache on canvas, 56 x 37 cm

Dotted Wings, 2013, oil and enamel on paper mache on canvas, 41 x 53 cm

Black Base, 2014, oil, enamel and pencil on canvas, 145 x 107 cm

Three Sides Yellow, 2014, oil, enamel, pigment, PVA, paper mache on canvas, 45 x 44 cm

Still on the line

'In Terri Brooks’ immaculately clean and fume-free studio is a collection of music to paint by. Glen Campbell sits next to Springsteen, next to Iggy, next to King. She says she likes songs about everyday people, tunes which celebrate nobodies and their dreams, non-über, non-heroic but dignified nonetheless. There is a definite parallel here with her own paintings and drawings which emerge from repetitive, labour-intensive actions, built-up residues and the extremities of her own reach, coupled with sub-radar inspirations she finds within her local environment, a suburb she has known intimately since childhood.

It is also important to note that Terri Brooks has a Doctorate in Philosophy, one of the most harmonious to art practice within the Humanities. For a philosopher, the enquiry is as critical as the answer, if not more so. Little is seen to have concrete substance and all is open to forensic examination. Over the fifteen years that she has been exhibiting with Flinders Lane Gallery, Brooks has applied such challenges to her own art, gradually reducing both her palette and the variety of her technique, pursuing the elemental base of it all. An associated fascination is with the dualism of the world – night/day; life/death; hot/cold – as she searches for her own balance. She eschews narrative and concentrates on the craft, in the sense of ‘domestic’, even feminine, crafts such as weaving, papier mache and pattern making.

A perfect realisation of all these aims are the suite of Drawings (capital ‘D’) in the exhibition Brown and Bone. In the Drawings, Brooks set herself a series of calculated actions like a production line employee and it is the repetition of these over days and weeks that result in the final pieces. For a piece like Black Base she first paints the canvas, then incises horizontal lines with a pencil from top to bottom whilst the paint is still wet. The next day, she returns and again incises from top to bottom, only now the paint has started to dry meaning clumps and clags start to accumulate like furrows at the edge of a recently graded road. The next day she returns, and the next and so on until the paint can be scarred no more. What is left is a geological field of stucco, a condensed mini strata recording every step of the artist’s passage in the same manner as a foundry worker or brickie. Honest and with every mark evident. However a transformation also occurs for the viewer as these are now artworks as well, elevated from something that merely is (such as the brickie’s wall) to something that is somehow bigger than what it may actually seem. These dynamics of art have been discussed and argued by philosopher-critics over centuries and now Brooks chooses to play her own part as well.

The title Brown and Bone also refers to the reduced palette of her paintings. A key example is Beige Bands Diptych where each vertical brushstroke is executed in one sweep clearly articulating the physical presence of the artist and the length of her arm. Amidst the wavering bands are two diagonals which immediately create a visible tension; and two sprayed black lines create the illusion of foreground. Simple means, simple tactics, dynamic results. This approach carries into the companion piece Beige Bands and to the smaller painting Beige Bands Black Stripes where sprayed dots contrast with the stripes like the accidental sgraffito found on a road after workmen have moved on. In this case, one set of workers have left their mark only to have another come along, recognise their potential and utilise them in the painterly realm to create philosophical meditations on the nature of art/work itself.' Andrew Gaynor, 2014.

Brown and Bone
August 26 - September 13
Flinders Lane Gallery Melbourne

View all works on line here

Installation shot of 'Brown and Bone', Flinders Lane Gallery

Collaboration

Bouquet, 2014, torn paper and ink on paper mache, 62 x 45 cm (approx.)

Division, 2014, oil, enamel and ink on perforated paper and paper mache, 60 x 40 cm (approx.)

Perforated Dots, 2014, oil and enamel on perforated paper, 63 x 39 cm (approx.)

Melinda Schawel, Terri Brooks collaboration for our exhibitions at Flinders Lane Gallery, August 26 - September 13

FLG artists Terri Brooks and Melinda Schawel have had a mutual admiration and respect for each other's work for over a decade. At the start of 2014, when the unique opportunity to exhibit simultaneously arose, both artists thought a collaborative project would not only be a tangible expression of this connection, but also an exciting and challenging one. For a collaboration to be truly successful, however, a lot of boxes need ticking. The artists must have time and a genuine interest in stepping into the other's shoes, blind trust, and a willingness to let go. There must be a common thread that underpins the work technically and/or conceptually. It’s risky. It doesn’t suit those who keep their cards too close to their chest. It therefore does beg the questions - what motivates artists to turn mutual admiration or connection into collaboration and does it work?

At first glance there really are no obvious similarities in the imagery, palette or media of their current works. In fact, there is a more graphic, hard edged line and brushwork present in Brooks’ pieces which one would rarely see in Schawel’s more fragile, floating shapes and torn surfaces. Schawel’s recurring blue grey tones accented with bold colours and created with water based ink on paper, are also in contrast with Brooks‘ large ‘brown and bone, not quite black and white’ oil and enamel works on canvas. Ironically it was exactly these differences that they brought to the collaboration which kept it interesting and visually appealing. The work entitled Division is probably the best example of this with Brooks’ distinctive stripes used in conjunction with Schawel’s perforations. Bouquet showcases both artists’ use and love of paper but in totally different ways, one employing papier-mâché and the other, collage.

The true motivation behind this project however, is both artists’ process driven approach that is at the crux of their practice, where process defines the work. Their curiosity and strong desire to be present in each other’s work, i.e. to engage in the other’s methodology and the symbolic gestures that go along with it, overrode any potential pitfalls. So, did it work? The artists selected five final works out of the original eight which they considered successful and four are displayed on the wall that divides yet unifies the concurrent exhibitions. The viewer of course will be the ultimate judge but as far as Brooks and Schawel are concerned, the success of any collaborative process ultimately lies in the process itself.

Terri Brooks Website↓

Since 1989 Terri Brooks has held over twenty solo shows in Australia, New Zealand, Italy and the Netherlands as well as participating in numerous exhibitions including art fairs in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Poland and Hong Kong. Her work is in the Neubrandenburg Museum Collection, Germany, The Macquarie Group Collection, Westpac Bank, many other corporate and private collections around the world. For over ten years her work has been been incorporated into projects by leading interior designers and architects for exclusive and award winning interiors. In 2018 she completed two major commissions for the Westin, Perth and Sheraton Four Points, Sydney.

Line and Weight

'In her seminal 1979 essay ‘Grids’, Rosalind Krauss writes that ‘logically speaking, the grid extends, in all directions, to infinity’. The grid within an artwork is therefore ‘a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely larger fabric’. The paintings in Line and Weight convey both this sense of the infinite spatial grid and, through the building up of layers, the infinite and repetitious nature of time. Washed over, painted across, re-written, line by line.' Anna Dunhill 2019.

Over the Edge

`The neglected zones of urban existence – alley ways, awnings, walls, gutters and shutters – occupy a unique place within the history of painting. Perhaps inadvertently, artists have been depicting such insignificant elements as cracked window ledges or the dark recesses of architraves since the time of Giotto. Ubiquitous, utilitarian and often worn down, the marginal nature of such sites and the phenomenological questions they raise has dominated Terri Brooks practice for the past two decades and continues to inform her work today.' Phe Luxford, 2011.