Brian Dawn Chalkley British, b. 1948

Brian Dawn Chalkley (b.1948, London) works across painting, drawing, performance, storytelling. Teaching has been a significant aspect of his practice since the 1990s. A figure in the trans community since the early 90s, the artist is renowned for their performances as Dawn who had a lead role in London’s underground trans club scene in the 80s and 90s. Now in their seventh decade, Brian Dawn Chalkley has explored gender, sexuality, desire and identity for more than four decades. The cycle of paintings that comprise The Pictorial Space of Poetic Horror (2021-22) are an act of world building. In this remarkable cycle of works ranging across engagements with domestic craft to high art and literature, Brian Dawn Chalkley weaves lived memory, reading, and desires aside half-heard exchanges onto pillowcases–partners and first recipients of our dreams. Through drawings, handwritten texts and embroidery, these works form a dream world interlaced by desire, loss and trauma set amongst a figural landscape of signs that speak to literature, lives and landscapes remembered and imagined. Brian Dawn Chalkey was the recipient of the David and Yuko Juda Art Foundation Grant in 2022.