ABOUT GEMMA COOK

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About Gemma

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Gemma’s art practice is gestural, expressive and deeply emotional. Her primary medium is charcoal, which she uses to draw instinctively and at pace, and is usually based on the human figure.

 

She also paints in oil, using a more palimpsestic and protracted approach. She enjoys creating scenes of hedonistic music festivals, positioned within liminal notions of the cosmos and the underworld.

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Gemma also enjoys performance drawing. She has showcased her work in various settings, including academic conferences, dance performances, and live music events.

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Her interest extends to animation and poetry film. She is currently using poetry film in her PhD and finds its ‘polyexpressiveness’ suited to researching complex social dynamics. She is discovering that this is a great way to work with different voices. It allows layering of meaning that retains individual authenticity without being reductive. She particularly likes working in small collaborative projects to understand marginalised groups and raise voices that are less heard.

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Gemma works from her art studio in Hove.

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Beyond her artistic endeavours, Gemma also works as a disability consultant. This work focuses on advocating for people with disability in disadvantaged contexts. She has worked for the European Disability Forum in Ukraine, to evaluate their humanitarian response to the outbreak of war.  She has also consulted for the UN, reviewing country programme reports and writing case studies. Additionally, she has worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross as a physiotherapy manager.

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Currently, Gemma is a doctoral researcher studying the policy experiences of adults with cerebral palsy in the UK. She is also a Trustee for the Rosie Jones Foundation, which supports the mental health of people with cerebral palsy. She has published numerous research projects and reports focusing on disability.

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Gemma has twenty years of experience as a neurological physiotherapist, holding leadership roles in several NHS teaching hospitals. Her extensive practice as a physiotherapist has given her an tacit knowledge of the human body, that is imbued into her life-drawing process which tends to be life-size.

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Gemma's art and career interests overlap and intertwine. She has an insatiable curiosity to understand human experience and thrives on advancing knowledge through creative expression.

 

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Academic Achievements

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• Doctoral Researcher - Grand Union Doctoral Training Pathway - ESRC Funded Scholarship - Hosted by Brunel University London

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• MSc - Global Health Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

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• BSc - Physiotherapy - King's College London

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• BA - Combined Arts - University of Liverpool

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