Jim Brook

We Want to Live, 2025 (FBU strike 1977, Dewsbury Picket Duty) Glass, Paint, metal, Wood, LED 47.5 x 60 cm Fabricated by @studioorme

Two Lovers, 2023 (Jimmy Ruffin, Live at Batley Variety Club 1971) Glass, Paint, metal, Wood, LED 47.5 x 60cm Stained glass made from a photo of my Gran and Grandad on their first date seeing Jimmy Ruffin at Batley Variety Club in 1971. They didn’t receive the actual photo for a few months due to postal strikes and by that time they were on their way to marriage (good job or the photo would have been a sour taste). James Corrigan who comes from a family of fairground and amusement owners (look at the names floating around scarborough) opened Batley Variety club in 1967 in the heart of the Heavy Woollen District, known as the Vegas of the north, Batley Variety Club hosted some of the best performers of the 60s/70s in the middle of the industrial north. A club for the working class, for the mill workers, steelworkers and miners of Batley, Dewsbury and nearby places. This work is Showing in New Now pt 2 opening tomorrow (friday 12th jan 2024, 6-9pm) at @guts_gallery Thanks to @brynley.odu.davies for having me Many thanks to @studioorme for the fabrication of this work! courtesy of Jim Brook and Guts Gallery. Photography by Eva Herzog Studio.

The Flatt Topp Twicthers are a group of men that drink in my local, The Flatt Top. In 1978 they formed a group based around twitching (the pursuit and observation of rare birds) as it was a shared love. Most men within the group worked within heavy industries or had a trade, with the weekly meetings and yearly trips away being their only solace apart from sport. At 18 months old i was taken from the care of my mum and missed the care system with the kindness of my gran and grandad taking me in, even though my grandad had been on disability benefits from 1992 due to a mix hard labour and sport in his younger years. It was thought by the children's services that I would follow the path of the ones that came before me because of the circle of abuse, trauma, addiction and neglect that had been passed down and made its way to me. The Flatt Top Twitchers took me under their wing as my grandad couldn't do the things he wanted with me as he became more ill and started to drink more and more. Camping trips to Keld with dave, group trips to blacktoft sands where I argued that every bird was a pigeon (i was about 8), spending every thursday evening as a bairn in Richards allotment with chicken kievs for tea, going pub to pub and never making it to where we was meant to be going or spending the summer holidays watching my grandad clean the lines at the club while him and the fellas sink about 10 pints each before it opens at noon. Definitely not a normal childhood but one I wouldn't change it and these men still welcome me with open arms when anything hits the fan, while never asking for a thing or understanding the impact they have had on me. They have given me the devotion of a lifetime, while giving each other the same, passing down culture, sharing stories and keeping me safe from a cruel world that we have all become familiar with. This banner is for this group, the ones that are left and still drink in the back room on a sunday night and the ones who have passed. That part of my life isn't something I want to let go or forget anytime soon. These men share a solidarity within its rawest form, with no expectation of anything back other than friendship.

IMG_0014, 18:31, 2024.  The walls record the death, again, day after day. But he will rise again. Oil on Canvas, 2026. 12x18” This new series of paintings continues Brook’s investigation into image making, authorship, and cultural value. Originating from photographs taken on an iPhone between 2021 and 2026, the works document everyday life within the village and surrounding areas in which the artist was raised. Funerals, pubs, domestic interiors, landscapes, still life, and fleeting moments of daily experience form a personal archive shaped by familiarity, repetition, and lived experience. As Brook prepares to leave the place that has defined much of his identity, these images have shifted from casual documentation into reflections on attachment, distance, memory, and belonging. Revisiting and transforming them becomes inseparable from a changing relationship to place and personal history. Produced in collaboration with a third party fabricator under the artist’s instruction, the photographs are translated into oil paintings, introducing distance between image and maker while complicating traditional ideas of authenticity, labour, and authorship. Through this process, the smartphone photograph, often understood as immediate, disposable, and culturally “low” is repositioned within the historical framework of oil painting, a medium long associated with permanence, status, and wealth. Brook draws parallels between contemporary image culture and painting’s historical role as a tool for preservation, aspiration, and social display. Where wealthy patrons once commissioned paintings of the animals they hunted, the fruit they consumed, or the people they loved, Brook elevates scenes from working class daily life into the same visual and material register. Through the tension between the digital and the painterly, the vernacular and the canonical, the work examines how value, memory, and lived experience are constructed, preserved, and reassigned within contemporary culture.

12 images showing my gran at different points over the last few months; in the slow, stubborn process of a 2000 piece jigsaw that’s never meant to be finished. What starts as something ordinary becomes something else, a quiet kind of persistence, a rhythm built out of time, memory, and repetition. The image itself comes from a place I kept returning to while we were both dealing with grief. Going back to the jigsaw again and again feels as simple as those summer evenings I spent walking to the mill, not searching for answers, just returning, keeping things moving in the smallest way. I’m not sure my gran really understands why she keeps at it, spending hours finding pieces that look almost identical, only to realise they belong somewhere else. This forms part of a larger installation, where it will sit alongside other objects and works.

Self portraits A photograph my gran took of my grandad with a box of kittens outside there first home in earlsheaton dewsbury. It’s coming up to 10 years since his passing and it feels like last week. Milk bottle from my solo show rich tea at @village.gallery A couple favourites of my great grandads working men’s club membership cards A small framed image I took at top of my street a few years ago Gran cooking A page from the book “Yorkshires river of industry”, Asda now stands in its place Some words explaining an installation work (unfinished) @joetorr87 breaking Been working on a new solo show over the last year or so and hopefully this year it will be seen by someone other than me

Happy to be showing within this group exhibition at The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery @lulgalleries [uz], [uz], [uz] is a celebration of the breadth and vitality of work by artists from working-class backgrounds. It features over thirty modern and contemporary artists who were born in or had significant connections to Yorkshire. Works include a wide range of media such as painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, installation and film.

People in Pubs Open till June 7th Thursday-Saturday @second_act_gallery

A few weeks ago I turned 30, an age where at one point of my life I thought I would never see. The further I get from younger years the more I start to enjoy life. Thanks for being part of it. Here is some stuff Me, my gran and our dog goldie. Jimmy Ruffin 7” Me in Paris at some point in the last few years Matt Monro CD Some of my grans notes I’ve been reflecting on A young andy booth signed photo Me and my grandad in the bath A photo of some pears from about 2020 A keyring of my grandad Where I used to play football Some home cooking by my gran Also I got arts council funding early this year, so I’ve been working away and am excited to start producing new work after some time of thought and research

North, 2025. 50mm button badge Images taken from when my grandad took push iron to Bridlington, he did this in fear he would never be able to get on the bike again due to upcoming spinal surgery. They stayed in bird for the night and had fish and chips for tea, in hope of getting train back the day after. But my grandad lost his brass for train fair (guessing after being in pub for too long) so he had to cycle back home the day after The 150 mile round trip isn’t a lot to some, but for a man who a few years later would never work again and spend the rest of his life of disability benefits I guess it was like going to Mars and back

Not much work I’ve made this year has been made public, but I’m kinda happy with that. It’s nice to sit and reflect and move forward with your practice while not feeling the need to rush and realise ideas. Anyway I’ve been reflecting on home a lot recently and the space I share with my gran and what the place means to me. Here for some works from the last few years 1. Detail scan from a wall rubbing, from the upstairs next to dryer. Graphite and pencil. 2024 2. Polaroid from 2021. 3. Gran making dumplings, 35mm. 2024. 4. Detail scan from a wall rubbing, from the upstairs next to dryer. Graphite and pencil. 2024 5. Polaroid of the table where we eat. 2021. 6. Sodden towel left to dry, 35mm. 2020. 7. Detail scan from a wall rubbing, from the upstairs next to dryer. Graphite and pencil. 2024 8. Polaroid of my grans room. 2021. 9. Dad bleeding radiator, 35mm. 2024. 10. Top of road, 35mm. 2021.

I never knew my grandad as a working man, in the mid 90s he was singed off work and spent the rest of his living life on disability benefits. So from 1995 when I was born I watched him go down hill in terms of physical health, mental health and with his relationship with alcohol while in the care of him and my gran. After his death in 2016 I became fixated on finding out about the man I never knew, him as a worker. Starting as a clerk, then joining the fire brigade, then being a window cleaner, taxi driver and lorry driver until his early retirement. I have spent a good while digging around looking at his days in the fire service. He spoke about this job as if it was the best thing on earth and the fact he did it because he didn’t want to fallow his brother down the colliery in our village, but I honestly know I couldn’t have done either. 1. A mill on fire between Dewsbury and Batley. 2. A work I made a while ago, gran and grandad in Blackpool, mills on fire, myself and my grandads photos used for his taxi driver licence. 3. Grandad on the picket of the 1977 FBU strike. 4. Union rep photos of the damage/remains of protective clothing after the death of a colleague. 5. FBU badge. 6. Union rep photos of the damage/remains of protective clothing after the death of a colleague. 7. Grandads FBU membership cards. 8. A mill on fire between Dewsbury and Batley. 9. Grandads FBU plates. 10. Union rep photos of the damage/remains of protective clothing after the death of a colleague. All research for new work (at some point)