Trevor Brown
Related: Google gallery 1 - Google gallery 2 - fetish art - grotesque art - hyperrealism - perversion in art - erotic art - transgressive art - British art
Articles: Trevor Brown interviews Masami Akita - Trevor Brown on Japanese bondage, Kinbiken and Chimou Nureki
My Alphabet (1999) - Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]Trevor Brown's My Alphabet is a beautifully designed book showcasing the artist's beautiful images of young, lolita-type japanese girls in disturbing images of bondage and torture. The cover is a beautiful black ultrasuede with pink lettering, the cover illustration is inlaid on the fabric, and the cover is protected with a clear plastic dustjacket. The print run was extremely limited and this sold out quickly after its release in Japan. Very few copies made it into the U.S. and My Alphabet has become a sought-after cult classic. Highly recommended if you can still find one. --A reader from New York, NY United States, amazon.com
Only Trevor Brown's warped imagination could turn simple children's dolls into the inhabitants of a sadomasochistic fantasyland. The master of the perverse takes the A-B-C's as his theme, using the child's rhyme to force his innocent characters into shocking yet oddly witty distressful situations. All bound together in a wonderfully erotic, Ultrasuede cover, a kind of Pat the Bunny for adults only. --Amazon.com
Li'l Miss Sticky Kiss (2004) - Trevor Brown
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]When is an innocent-looking doll innocent no longer? When it falls into the hands of painter Trevor Brown, whose warped imagination can turn a child's toy into whimsical erotica. Brown's sadomasochistic fantasies have earned him a loyal following. In true Trevor Brown style the book is wrapped in baby-pink terry cloth fabric and the inside filled with his familiar provocative paintings. A definite collector's item! --from the publisher
Artwork by Trevor Brown
Biography
Though presently living in Japan, Trevor Brown is an British artist whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes, with unusual wit.
Important career motivating friendships include French artist Romain Slocombe (the pioneer of "medical art") and William Bennett (leader of the notorious electronic-noise band Whitehouse.
Trevor Brown's art has been featured in Adam Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture II, and in Jim Goad's ANSWER Me! zine, as well as a variety of other publications. His work has been featured as cover art for a number of bands, including Deicide, Whitehouse, GG Allin, Kayo Dot, and Venetian Snares.
He is often compared with Mark Ryden in that he is known for child-like characters in various states of distress. However themes in his work extend to car crashes, (reminiscent of J.G. Ballard's Crash), abattoirs, and Japanese pornography. His art is close in spirit to the Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst or Jake and Dinos Chapman. Brown acknowledges artist Romaine Slocombe as a primary influence. --[1]
Interviewed by Chad Hensley
Drawing influences from England's industrial music scene and J.G. Ballard's novel Crash, Trevor Brown's black and white illustrations began appearing in 1986 in a series of photocopied zines titled Graphic Autopsy. These self-produced publications featured bruised and battered women, often violent and grotesque while visually captivating. It wasn't long before Brown attracted the attention of individuals like William Bennett of Whitehouse who immediately put him to work creating album covers for his band as well as others pon his Susan Lawly record label.
In 1993, bored and frustrated within Britain's puritanical attitudes, Brown moved to Tokyo drawn by a fascination with Japanese culture. While not quite an overnight success, his notoriety in Japan was imminent; a fact that can be partially attributed towards the country's attitudes towards sexual deviance. Brown also began utilizing vibrant colors created with the airbrush and his work took on a cute yet sinister presentation. In addition to producing art for numerous magazines and still more CD covers, he's now had three limited edition hardback collections of his color work published: (Hear No, Speak No, See No) Evil, Trevor Brown, and my alphabet. In 1999, many of his black and white drawings from Graphic Autopsy were compiled in Temple of Blasphemy published by Italy's Mondo Bizzarro.
Brown's subject matter often juxtaposes the innocent with the perverse, transforming the taboo into an alluring exposition while still retaining a disturbing quality. Brown succeeds in subverting pornographic themes with an easthetically pleasing style. His explorations into sexual fantasy dive head first into a fetishistic world, combining Lolita-like children's dolls, medical fetishism, and sadomasochism into a vividly compelling voyeuristic creation. His work seduces the viewer while forcing the individual to question his or her perceptions of normalcy. Diseased and degenerate or beautiful and evocative; these are left for the eye of the beholder to decide. --interview by Chad Hensley for Esoterra magazine (issue nine) - June 2000, http://www.pileup.com/babyart/esoterra.htm
Albert Hofer article
One of the central elements of Trevor Brown’s imagery is indeed his fetishization of bruises and wounds; the artist’s paintings and illustrations primarily focus around a representation of unresolved violence by portraying scenes of a (mainly fetishistic or sadomasochist) sexual nature in which abuses appear most of the times ‘in limbo’, somehow suspended in time: these have often just taken place, or otherwise seem to be about to happen. Bruises, a recurring element in most of Brown’s works, appear to be a sort of ‘trademark’ for the artist; no body seems to be immune from the sexual frenzy affecting Trevor Brown’s deflagrating brushes, there is no inch of skin which is left immaculate, and each body- part, each object depicted in the paintings and illustrations of the artist seem to inevitably get caught in a web of repeated traumas. To say it with J.G. Ballard’s words, everything seems to come together in a ‘coronation of wounds’, a multiplication of injuries towards the infinite. --Albert Hofer via http://www.channel83.co.uk/docs/tbrown.pdf [Mar 2007]
CD Art Work
Trevor Brown illustraded CDs by Merzbow, Venetian Snares and Whitehouse (here, here, here and here).
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