Exhibitions Terri Brooks Further Afield 8th May 2018 - 19th May 2018

FLG is delighted to present to you the showroom and online exhibition of new and recent works by acclaimed abstract artist Dr. Terri Brooks. Some of these artworks are on display in the showroom at FLG, others are available upon request.

The highly poetic and symbolic visual language of artist Terri Brooks has carried across the spectrum of her practice for the last 30 years.

NOTES FROM THE ARTIST: When I was young I decided that I wanted to develop one thing over my lifetime. I chose painting and in particular the field of abstraction. I saw abstraction as a profound outcome of modernism which was not limited to an ‘ism’ of the era. The title of this exhibition ‘Further Afield’ is an acknowledgment of the influence previous abstract artists have had upon my development and coincides with the staging of ‘The Field Revisited’ at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). ‘The Field’ held at the inaugural opening of the new NGV in 1968 was a seminal Australian abstract exhibition.
I am personally interested in the phenomenological aspect of nature and physics. How it relates to the self and the experience of living. The area of painting that interests me is minimal intuitive gestural abstraction with an emphasis on process. Using fundamental elements including black, white, dot, line and horizontals and verticals, the work is constructed in thin layers revealing its history.
The paper work relates to my lifelong interest in the Australian tradition to ‘make do’ or improvise.

"Suspended within each canvas is an intentional exercise in reduction, true to the principles of minimalist practice. The recurring motif of line, laid down in slow and clear sequence, indicates a subtle meditation on labour and the humble truth of the wearing effects of time. " Phe Luxford, Australian Art Review

"This is art that eliminates the descriptive, excludes the pictorial, narrative and the fictive, thus focusing on the essential in form, creating what is often referred to as a truth. Thus Brooks’ reduced aesthetic approach speaks to us about order, directness, integrity, veracity and morality; accordingly these stylistic predilections function to extend an invitation for the audience to be purposeful, ethical and socially equitable - the material articulation of our ideas of a good life. This idea that Brooks’ art – or any art for that matter, can speak to us on matters of morality and truth, helps us to place at the very centre of our aesthetic conundrums the question of the values we want to live by rather than merely how we want things to look.
We started here with an explication on the censures often levelled at abstract art as a platform for the discussion of the profound weightiness of Brooks’ paintings of nothing and we finish with the poignant words of English poet Robert Browning,
That which is less complicated is often better understood and more appreciated than what is more complicated; simplicity is preferable to complexity; brevity in communication is more effective than verbosity." (excerpt from Principia:the art of Terri Brooks, by Dr AJ Byrnes)

Lucy Lippard, The Silent Art, Art in America Magazine, (January – February ed) 1967, Art in
America Publications.

TERRI BROOKS PROFILE
DOWNLOAD BIO / CV (PDF)

Terri Brooks
Regency 2018
oil on paper
35cm x 24cm x 13cm

Terri Brooks
Striped Box 2018
oil on paper
40cm x 25cm x 14cm

Terri Brooks
Black White 2017
oil and enamel on canvas
41cm x 31cm Currently on display at SJB Offices

Terri Brooks
Red White 2017
oil and enamel on canvas
41cm x 31cm Currently on display at SJB Offices