Through numerous forms of creation, including drawings, paintings, film and performance, Brian Dawn Chalkley questions the performance of gender and identity. Working as two different personalities, Brian and Dawn, they are able to tell stories of obsession, repression, sexual fantasy with bleak humor and great humanity. The multitude of mediums allow Chalkley to fully experiment and explore this concept of “becoming other” as an identity in itself. Born in 1948, Brian Dawn Chalkley lives and works in London as a senior tutor at in the master of fine arts program at Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 1973 Chalkley graduated with a bachelor of arts with honors from Chelsea College of Art, and then went on to graduate with a master of arts from Slade School of Fine Art in 1975. They were an honorary fellow of Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000 and were course leader at Chelsea College of Art and Design from 2005-2016. Chalkley has participated in numerous conferences and lectures in venues such as the Royal College of Art London, Outpost Gallery Norwich, and UAL London, to name a few. They have been the recipient for grants and awards such as the Residency in Taipie UAL award (2017), Research funds for Ancient and Modern Publication (2012), Research grant for book publication “Mother” (2005), 1989 Rome Award in Painting, and John Moores, Liverpool Exhibition 15 (1987), among many others

Brian Dawn Chalkley is a London based artist whose work is an ongoing discussion of gender, sexuality and identity. His work is based around two characters, Brian and his transvestite personality, Dawn. Brian Dawn Chalkley is the sum of Brian and Dawn, yet one cannot experience them both at the same time. I am working on an ongoing series of double portraits of Brian and Dawn where I get them to interact like actors would in CGI films.

Brian Dawn Chalkley (b. 1948, London. Lives and works in London) is a visual and performance artist, storyteller and teacher. Formative in the trans community since the early 90’s, the artist is known for their performances as Dawn a leading role in London’s underground trans clubbing scene in the 1980s and ‘90s, a time when it was deemed unacceptable and perverse. Now in their 70s, 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”, his alter ego, into his public art practice, too. Ever since, this movement between “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. Brian Dawn is best known for hosting the Salon, an event for performers and performances in which orthodox moral, social, and artistic boundaries are challenged by the representation of unconventional behaviour and the use of experimental forms. The people they meet and the places he goes are the subject of his work, memories from the artist’s own life and childhood are present, although laced with violence and horror. But there is a chasm between the details of the stories, the narrative itself, and the meaning behind both. While we are invited to speculate on, and discover more about, these scenarios, they ultimately refuse to give more than these stark, dream- like symbols, and so refuse any true resolution. Brian Dawn’s past collaborations with artists and academics such as Jack Halberstam, Charles Atlas, Brian Catlin, Dawn Mellor and Tony Gresoni, to name a few, continue to shape the way trans artists working are framed today.