Flo Brooks is a painter of modern life. His practice can be considered as a revising of traditional genre painting: at the very centre of each painting is a personal reflection on work, leisure and the in-between. Speaking of his approach, Brooks has said: “It feels fundamental to think critically about the ways we connect with each other, and what this might look like in our own lives. I make sense of things through lived experience, through intimate relationships and the communities I’m part of, whether that’s the rural community I grew up in, queer and trans communities, art networks or my blood family”.

Working with acrylic on shaped wooden panels, the compositions of his paintings literally burst at the seams sprawling across the gallery walls. For his recent touring exhibition, Angletwich, that opened at Brighton CCA, presented a suite of paintings set within a unique sculptural installation for the first time. Drawing from his own experience growing up in the rural Southwest, the works centre on a series of rural archetypes; from a livestock fair and the post office, to a lonely bus stop, generating a simultaneous sense of familiarity and isolation. Each work in the exhibition is part of a wider whole; depicting characters, scenes and places which together develop a critical narrative of place and queer experience in Britain.

Brooks recently presented his second solo exhibition at Project Native Informant, Be tru to your rec, a series of paintings depicting the changing landscape of a British recreation ground. 

Flo Brooks recently opened his first public artwork, Inner Bark Out, commissioned by Clapham Public Realm Programme and Studio Voltaire, as well as a solo exhibition at Spike Island, Harmonycrumb.