Is Now a Good Time?, 2017
Cubitt, London
Curated by Helen Nisbet
For a solo exhibition at Cubitt, Brooks made a series of paintings which explored the intersections between family, community and place. The commissioned works recalled biographical scenarios of intimate everyday scenes between Brooks and his family. Reflecting the specific circumstances of his life, the works questioned, provoked and interwove ideas around remoteness, care-giving, the absence and presence of (queer) community, and the hormonally and chemically altered body.
The paintings depicted widely recognisable domestic scenes alongside the minutia and intricacies of a very specific experience. Whilst creating the work in this show Brooks was undergoing Hormone Replacement Treatment (HRT) and subsequently managing the complexities of entering a second puberty as an adult. His main access to transgender and queer spaces was online and he was forced to co-exist within the familiar, normative structures of the 'home'. Moving back to the place he grew up also involved new and unexpected responsibilities of caregiving, emotional and physical labour and finding out what it meant to live together once again.
In titling the exhibition Is now a good time? Brooks asked, with equal levels of humour and sincerity, how we determine when the time is good, or right, for anything. Touching on a question that was often assumptively asked of him: "do you feel happier now [you've transitioned]?", Brooks drew attention to the narratives often ascribed to trans people, and asked why we place so much value on certainty and resolve. The exhibition described a way of living and being whereby partitions deteriorated and things met awkwardly, sometimes painfully, where impotence and insecurity could generate ingenuity, and where queer ways of being could endure and even thrive in surprising places.
Photos by Mark Blower
Exhibition poster by Cecilia Serafini