Brooke Wilson
About
Brooke Wilson is a writer and curator based in London, UK. Her writing has been published in print and online by a variety of publications, including: émergent Magazine; DATEAGLE ART and Curatorial Affairs. She has also been commissioned by numerous artists and international galleries on exhibition and publication texts.
In addition to her writing, she has also curated a number of exhibitions in various site-specific, white cube and institutional settings, including: The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London and the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection, London.
In 2018, she also co-founded Boys Don’t Cry UK, an art collective and platform raising awareness around male mental health, which has led numerous multi-disciplinary projects around London. Previously, she has worked as a tutor and educator alongside the Outreach Team at the University of the Arts London and led curated workshops for a number of institutions and charities, including Kings Cross Academy and charity, Portugal Prints.
Statement
I spend hours looking at space, ruminating in rooms and allowing my mind to travel on its own accord. I find pleasure in minor details, a handle, a hinge, a screw. I observe the space around objects, dismantling their material components before registering the object in its entirety. I am not interested in gaps, per se, but the space that hides amongst the interiors of the everyday; a nook in the corner of a room, a cranny within the cavities of a wall. Taking inspiration from philosophy, architecture and poetry, I want my writing to reimagine and rebuild the environments I travel through.
Musing on space, memories and the imagination through creative non-fiction, memoir and lyrical prose, my writing is in errancy — both fast and fleeting. I move with my subjects via associations, building an image that if you let it, will expand wider than the confines of the page.
Storeys
Storeys is a collection of essays on growing up and out of space. Centred around memory, childhood and the small spaces we once inhabited, this publication seeks to spatialise emotions and articulate the crevices in which they are housed.
The storeys of a building hold stories of everyday life - they are levels which contain us. In this collection of essays, I ask the reader to follow me through a fragmented maze of real and fictitious narratives that develop via the construction of a dollhouse and spill out during the slow unpacking of a moving box. Exploring the psychological spaces of the home and its associations with security; here, reveries become reality and games, rehearsals for life.
With thoughts that interlock, build and unravel, Storeys is a tender collection of essays that highlight the inevitability of maturing and the unnerving feelings that occur when you realise you’re all grown up.
Medium: Collection of Essays
Size: 10,000
Consume
Consume is an essay exploring food, family and the connections we form when the two are combined. Written in collaboration with the Foundling Museum, this essay is in response to their latest exhibition 'Finding Family'.
This essay is part of a larger publication - entitled 'Extended Family' - which explores the notions of family and its extension beyond blood relations. It also features an introductory text by James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner Olivia Laing and will be available to purchase via the MA Writing Store.
Medium: Publication
Size: 850 Words
The Performance of [De]installation
The Performance of [de]installation was an interview conducted with Anne Tallentire during the installation of her exhibition ‘Material Distance’ at The John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. In the interview, we discuss the ideas behind her closing performance Look Over 2 and explore the wider dialogue of assembly and disassembly within her practice.
Medium: Interview
Modes of Movement: A Map for Writing
Modes of Movement: A Map for Writing is a pamphlet containing a short text written whilst mid-flight. The text looks at aviation as a mode of transportation and the effects it has on the act of writing. Moving with ideas, floating amongst the clouds, this pamphlet is a love letter to the sky and a poem about dreaming.
I intend to take this series further and develop a collection of pamphlets exploring several modes of transport: train, boat, car, bus, and tube. Acting as a dreamer's travel guide, each pamphlet would offer an insight into the various feelings evoked from writing on the move.
Medium: Handmade pamphlet