The Connor Brothers
Known for their paintings and prints depicting pin-up models and book covers accompanied by pithy text, The Connor Brothers explore the boundary between truth and fiction, playing with ideas of experience versus reality.
The artists burst onto the scene in 2013, introducing themselves as Franklin and Brendan Connor, American twins who had been raised in an extreme Christian cult in California known as "The Family" before escaping to Brooklyn as teenagers. In 2014, they revealed their true identities as British gallery owners Mike Snelle and James Golding. They had constructed their fictional biographies to mirror their own experiences with mental health problems and drug addiction.
Seeking to navigate and make sense of contemporary life, The Connor Brothers have developed a razor-sharp approach to satire. This often manifests itself in the recreation and reimagining of 1950s posters and vintage paperback book covers, but also in the form of silkscreen prints and paintings
The Connor Brothers have exhibited internationally from New York, Sydney and Dubai to London, Hong Kong and Berlin. Examples of their work can be found in major public and private collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Penguin Collection and both the Omer Koc and Niarchos Collections. In September 2021, the duo collaborated with The Big Issue to create a special art edition of the magazine.
Twins Franklyn and Brendan Connor were brought up within a secretive & highly controversial cult known as ‘The Family’. Born out of the hippy movement in 1968 and founded by David Berg ‘The Family’ was an extreme Christian cult whose members believed in something called ‘The System’. Other children brought up within the cult include the actors River and Joaquin Phoenix.
As children the twins were deprived of access to information from outside of their commune. Without access to mainstream media their knowledge of the world was limited to the teachings and interactions they gained from other cult members. At sixteen the boys turned their backs on The Family and ran away from home. After several years riding the freight trains they settled in the Brooklyn area of New York.
Having been starved of information for so many years Franklyn and Brendan were initially overwhelmed by the outside world but soon developed an insatiable curiosity and a remarkable appetite to learn. They developed a system whereby each of them would read, watch and discover things independently and then share them with one another via a series of notebooks and sketchpads. This interaction developed into making art together, a process they describe as ‘trying to make sense of the world.’ Their often humorous work is steeped in references to both historical and popular culture and presents an almost anthropological view of contemporary western society.
Now in their early twenties the twins split their time between New York and Missouri.
The Connor Brothers are fictional characters created by the artists known as The Connor Brothers