Alan Brooks has taken rubbings of figurative and written graffiti from
toilet stalls he frequents and rendered them in oil and copper and
watercolour.
Having never been in the men's toilets myself (aside from a few queue-hopping incidents), I can only but imagine what artistic treasures adorn the urine-scented stalls; beyond the 'Stacey's a slag' statements scratched into the adverts for Tampax in the women's. Well thanks to Alan Brooks' new show at MOT International, it turns out that aside from the magical ability to pee standing up, all I'm missing is an array of crudely drawn cocks, swear words and freakishly breasty women. All of which leads me to believe that peeing men aren't the great thinkers one might suppose.
When I was a kid I was taken to St Paul's Cathedral to do brass rubbings of effigies, and Brooks uses a similar technique, replacing mediaeval knights and calligraphy with glory holes. Brooks has taken rubbings of figurative and written graffiti from toilet stalls he frequents and rendered them in oil and copper and watercolour. He includes incidental details such as the scratches on toilet doors and dust motes. The purpose is to outline our desire for baseness and crude sexuality, displayed in an open arena where bodily functions bring us all to the same level and inspire an inarticulate yet barefaced honesty. 
Alan Brooks, 'Eat The Rich', oil on copper 2008
He compares his work to notorious homosexual author Jean Genet, whose uncanny knack of making the lavatorial poetic makes the comparison seem a slight overstatement. Genet, who saw 'a deep and sunken beauty' in traitors, criminals and thieves and who believed that 'achieving harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance' was a man who extrovertly lived his baseness and revelled in his debauchery, falling in and out of prison. Whilst Genet merged his art and life, Brooks has taken a by-product which offers very little (and gives little insight into his own life – aside from the fact that he may lurk in toilets) and turned it into essentially a labour-intensive way to pass the time. There's the clinical eye for detail but none of the salacious mythology. 
Alan Brooks, 'Fuck the Hole', acrylic and watercolour on paper 2008
The paintings are extremely intricate and bear a resemblance to the primal simplicity of cave paintings. The strange, sketchy creatures such as a figure with six breasts and a penis are the minotaurs of modern society: hyper-sexualised beings caught up in a surreal violence, and hidden from view. However despite the work put into the production (each one has taken months to complete), they retain the unfortunate aesthetic of a photocopy from a horny 11-year old's 'zine. In this sense, Brooks work is like the diamond ring with the gems on the inside, an interesting and noble concept but a selfish one. In this climate, where art has to vie with countless rivals for attention, you wonder what Brooks would produce putting his energy into something more elaborately visual, where the subject matter is his own as opposed to something he found whilst peeing.
So the next time you want to express your desire for someone to 'suck cock' or you wish to exercise your talent for rubbish erotic art, stop and think, because it just might end up on a gallery wall.
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