Flo Brooks’s new paintings are chaotic microcosms of everyday recreation. Each lumpy, odd-shaped panel is composed of multiple viewpoints out onto a rec area. One work is filled with LGBTQ+ flags, used syringes, coppers, goal posts and snails. Another is made up of joggers and sunbathers, big ripe blackberries and empty condom wrappers.
Brooks is collaging all these clashing elements together because it’s what he sees out of his window, it’s the politics of the spaces around him; it’s the coppers and screaming kids and gay protesters and greasy burger vans and litter and sexualty of the spaces we have to share, of the common spaces that belong to all of us. There's a lot of criticism here, but a lot of joy too, and a whole heap of resistance. The life in these paintings clashes because that’s what we do, as a species, and Brooks captures it all with a unique visual style and aesthetic language.
Painting it is a way of making sense of the politics of everyday life. Even if it’s dirty and messy and tense, at least it’s ours.
