MOMENTS - Modern art in Bury St Edmunds
An exhibition of modern art taking place in Bury St Edmunds at Moyes Hall, (with a mention of artists such as Banksy and Tracey Emin) caught my eye and, thinking it would be a good morning out, we determined to visit. It was well worth the visit. However, the artists who really caught my eye were the `Connor Brothers`- who are not in fact related at all!
Art has always asked us tough questions about where truth ends and where artifice begins — and indeed, whether there can or should be a boundary at all. However, in an era of obsessive social media use, competing cultural narratives, ‘fake news’ and post-truth, it is a matter that may have never been more pressing for our world.
It is into such a world that The Connor Brothers have stepped — and are already enjoying staggering commercial success and cultural currency. But in the case of this once-mysterious duo, it is now a little easier to separate fact from fiction — or at least, that may seem so on first inspection.
They just bonded in their art work and have become an international success story, making people smile while empowering them to pursue humanitarian projects. The brothers created their original pieces as a project to reshape their lives. When you see their work you have to smile, its one step away from Banksy’s two-dimensional style using vintage images with a new twist.
Here are photographs of three of their images (this was allowed by the organisers!), but first a `Banksy`.
Hula Hoop Girl
Removed from a salon in Nottingham and offered temporarily to Moyes`s Hall for the `Moments` exhibition a week later by its new owner, Brandler Galleries. The owner of the salon had wanted the work removed as it appeared to be leading to criminality such as theft and vandalism, not only to the salon but the `Hula Hoop Girl` herself. Unfortunately, not an unusual occurrence for these street art works.
Now for three images from The Connor Brothers which made me smile, and made me think - hope they do for you as well.
There were several other prints by these artists, but I just picked these three to photograph, as they were all hung together. Some of the artists `humanitarian` ones were very thought provoking. To give a little background to the artist, I have quoted the following:
`Mike Snelle and James Golding—who make art under the moniker “the Connor Brothers”—juxtapose pin-up style portraits of women with blocks of solid colour and deadpan snippets of text. The British artists’ chic, slick paintings and works on paper explore artifice and sensational storytelling, themes that they initially folded into their fictional artist personas: The Connor Brothers at first maintained that they were twin brothers who had escaped from a California extremist Christian cult known as 'The Family.' At sixteen the twins escaped to Brooklyn where they began creating artworks in order to make sense of the world they had been deprived of. However, in October 2014 these characters were revealed as a myth and art dealers Mike Snelle and James Golding exposed themselves as The Connor Brothers.`
A great exhibition which I am pleased I visited.
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