Harmonycrumb is a new commission for Spike Island, Bristol, exploring trans and gender non-conforming histories through painting and assemblage.
The exhibition includes seven acrylic paintings appliqued onto found fabric, and six assemblages composed of lino flooring cutouts and handmade
objects. Together, these works explore speculative entanglements between Brooks’ own life and the experiences of different historical figures,
including military leader Joan of Arc (1412-31), ‘female husband’ Charles Hamilton (1721-46), and physician Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka (1915-
62).
Embedded in the materials of domestic space, which Brooks describes as ‘the first space of dreaming, fantasising, worlding,’ each work originates
from fragments of these people’s lives, gleaned from newspaper clippings, autobiographical descriptions and visits to the places they lived and
worked.
In one painting, Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka is depicted riding a motorbike through the countryside. He is surrounded by images and ephemera
that relate to the former College Motors garage in Bristol, where he wrote a ground-breaking book about transexualism, Self: A Study in Ethics and
Endocrinology, in 1946. In another, Charles Hamilton, who worked as a quack in Somerset, is shown at a market cross, assembling and selling
bottles of 18th-century medicines with mysterious-sounding names, such as ‘Sovereign Elixir’ and ‘Viper Drops’. Motifs from Brooks’ own life also
appear throughout, forming layered and interweaving narratives that span time and space.
Extending out from the paintings, the floor assemblages support a range of objects and ephemera that are either appropriate to, or out of step with,
the period. Some of these objects are placed on and around the lino, which undulates across the floor. Others, such as a broken candlestick and one
of Joan of Arc’s sabatons (plate armour shoes), emerge from cut out ‘windows’.
Collaging together different places, eras and individuals, Brooks’ works resist simplified representations of trans and gender non-conforming lives.
Rather they open up a flexible space for the unfolding of multiple perspectives, shifting identities and evolving relationships. They are not historical
portraits but dream-like scenarios: fragmented, mutable, incomplete.
The show continues until 10th September 2023.
Photos by Dan Weill