Art on a Postcard x War Child UK 2024 Part II

About
Brooke Fitzsimons (b. Sydney, 1959) worked as a graphic designer in magazine production in Sydney for 10 years before she moved to London permanently in 1988. She started her Fine Art studies in 1990 with an evening access course and went on to gain two Fine Art degrees in London where she lives and works.

Education
2013 Master of Research Arts Practice, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London.
2001 Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree, Fine Art Practice & Theory, Chelsea College of Art, London.
1990 Foundation in Fine Art, Heatherley School of Fine Art, London.
1988 Moved to London permanently.
1983-88 Worked as a magazine Art Director; then as a Creative Director at Australian Consolidated Press on various publications, Sydney Australia.
1979-83 Trained as a graphic designer in magazine production at Australian Consolidated Press, Sydney, Australia.

Select Exhibitions/Awards
2023: OPEN04, Group Show. Excelsior Studios, London.
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of the Arts, London.
OPEN03, Group Show. Excelsior Studios, London.

2022: Exhibition 2: Brooke Fitzsimons. PRDD artboard project. 16 prints mounted on artboards onbuildings and benches in Park Royal, London.
OPEN02, Group Show. Excelsior Studios, London.
OPEN01 Group Show. Excelsior Studios, London.

2019: SIDE BY SIDE: Adrienne Gaha + Brooke Fitzsimons. Piers Feetham Gallery, London.

2018: Brooke Fitzsimons. Solo show at Olsen Gallery, Sydney2 x 2 (+/-) group show. Olsen Gallery, Sydney

2017: Sydney Contemporary Art Fair. Olsen Gallery, Sydney

2016: Group Show. 5 Rankins Lane, Melbourne

2013: Where’s Mres? Group, group graduate show. Chelsea College of Art, London

2011: ‘Everyone’, Group Show, Hewer Street Studios, London
Brooke Fitzsimons, New Work. Soloshow at Olsen Gallery, Sydney

2009: Adrienne Gaha and Brooke Fitzsimons New Work, Hewer Street Studios, London

Gallery Representation
Olsen Gallery, Sydney Australia

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork
Collecting printed images and her own photographs as references, Brooke starts with a tonal underpainting, building up the colour and the images with many thin, transparent oil paint glazes. Working in layers allows her to make wholly new compositions. The human figure reduced to a silhouette, linear architectural forms, irregular natural shapes, luminous colours, are all borrowed from and used to represent the beauty of the physical world. Her practice is influenced by a former career as a graphic designer in magazine production, knowledge of colour printing and photographic processes, yet made by hand with oil paint on linen. Brooke deliberately sets up formal oppositions: a flat silhouette versus tonal rendering; man-made forms versus natural ones; hard-edge versus soft-focus etc.. Rather than making the painted surface either abstract (all about the painted surface) or figurative (a 'window' into a three dimensional space), her aim is to make the surface appear to be both at the same time; to provoke a 'play' between the two oppositions, so that abstraction and illusion are held in an oscillation, where neither is dominant. In this way, she makes the flat surface of her paintings an active threshold - an equivocal, playful field.


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