Brian Dawn Chalkley

BIOGRAPHY
Brian Dawn Chalkley is a visual artist and storyteller. Formative in the trans community since the early 90’s, the artist is known for their performances as Dawn a leading figure in London’s underground trans clubbing scene in the 1980s and ‘90s, a time when it was deemed unacceptable and perverse.

Brian Dawn Chalkley has been exploring gender, sexuality and identity for more than four decades, first in private and then in their art. Having started their career as a modernist painter, whilst a transvestite in private, in 1996 he embraced “Dawn”, their alter ego, into their public art practice, too. Ever since, this movement “Brian” and “Dawn” has fuelled an odyssey into what it means to perform gender, and to form and reform identities, going far beyond the modernist tendencies of his earlier years, and continuing to build an impressive body of work that uses narrative and costume to construct and deconstruct aspects of their personality and personae.