Thursday 8 August 2019, 7pm
Please note that this is a free event but there is a voluntary donation of £5 to raise funds for Headway East London.
Almost every Thursday for the past 20 years, Tony Brooks has produced a drawing. This exhibition presents a selection of the artist’s work since joining Headway East London in 1998. Curated by Zara Joan Miller, this retrospective will include works on paper alongside a video installation, projections, text-based pieces and a puppet, created by Brooks in 2017.
While autobiographical accounts, limericks and handwritten notes exist within Brooks’ portfolio, his drawings indicate a dialogue with a more private world. Men on horseback recur regularly within Brooks’ portfolio. There are also several men in wheelchairs and many winged creatures. Sitting, walking, galloping or taking flight — the various figures within Brooks’ work call into question ideas surrounding mobility, disability and somatic mastery, as well as the nature of self-portraiture.
Using the walls and windows of Cafe OTO, Brooks’ drawings will be given the space to exist together, in a single room — inviting the tying of various threads and themes across his work. Billy Steiger and Tom Wheatley will perform with Headway members Sue Talbot and Stuart Donaldson, inspired by songs Brooks’ listens to while drawing. Zara Miller will read a poem, created from the artist’s extensive written and autobiographical notes.
This event is a fundraiser with proceeds from tickets going to the charity Headway East London.
Original drawings and prints will be on sale and available to order from the artist.
Billy Steiger was born in Howth on the 16th December, 1986. Now he plays the violin.
“Then he sat down by a pond and began to play a tune. As he played, the most extraordinary thing happened. One by one the fish in the pond began to jump out and fly about in the air. And what is more, they were all different colours and they were singing to the music.”
Patrick, Quentin Blake.
https://billysteiger.bandcamp.com/
Tom Wheatley is an artist and musician based in London. His work is patterns, rhythms and cycles, at an interface of physical and digital zones.
His projects are Tennota with Grundik Kasyansky, Vesta Payne with Sarah Hartnett and Cast-On with Ilana Blumberg. He also works closely with Daniel Blumberg and Adam Christensen.
Zara Joan Miller is an artist working across poetry, performance and film. Her work often plays with movement and sound as a way of reimagining a body’s rhythm. She is the author of BLUE MONDAY (JOAN Publishing, 2022), which was also released as a duo LP with cellist Ute Kanngießer on Reading Group in 2023.
Her work has recently been presented at Barbican Centre, Muse Gallery, Horse Hospital, In Vitro, Default Den Haag and and has appeared in Fieldnotes journal, Hotel, MAP, Another Gaze and Worms Magazine.
