John Brooks

John Brooks is a visual artist working across textiles and a range of media. He has a broad exhibition history and often collaborates with fashion designers to create custom textiles.

John Brooks teaches in the Certificate IV in Textile Design, Development and Production, specialising in Experimental Textiles, Textile Design Concepts, and Drawing. Initially trained as a weaver at RMIT, he went on to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Drawing) at the Victorian College of the Arts, and undertook an honours year at Monash University tracing the history of craft through the lens of speculative fiction.

John's background in textiles impacts his approach to materials and processes, working predominantly in soft sculpture. His practice also extends into video, sound, drawing, and collage, and his approach to these mediums is heavily informed by his textile practice: layering, repetition, and an amalgamation of opposite concepts. Recent projects include a virtual residency and public installation through Craft Victoria, an ongoing collaboration Sick Bay with Audrey Tan, transforming unlucky objects from the general public to create objects that function as either talisman or placebo, most recently at Blindside ARI, The Invisible Bridge at C3 contemporary art space, The Third Tamworth Textile Triennial curated by Glenn Barkley, and Every Second Feels Like a Century at West Space, curated by Hannah Presley and Debbie Pryor.

In addition to his arts practice, John works as a freelance textile designer with local fashion labels to develop custom textiles. Developed through a collaborative process, these textiles are often hand-woven and cannot be reproduced by a machine, and form one-of-a-kind or limited edition pieces within a collection. This process of collaboration and material exploration feeds into his teaching practice, and he encourages students to explore, seek feedback and refine their ideas to create innovative textile designs.

2020 - Neopurple (Design engineer)

2019 - Schiavello (Project engineer)

2018 - Dyson (UK, Design engineer)

2017 - Froth Design (Director)

2016 - Glowpear (Director)

2015 - Swinburne/RMIT (Studio lecturer)