> Trevor 'Turbo' Brown - Friends and Family: 4 August – 29 August 2009 AT Conway Street, London
Trevor ‘Turbo’ Brown only paints animals: koalas, wombats, emus, kangaroos. This, he says, is because when was fifteen-years-old and living homeless on the streets of Mildura and on the banks of the River Murray, animals were his only friends.
His nickname – Turbo – is borrowed from one of the characters in the 1984 film, Breakdance. And Brown’s own abilities as a break-dancer perhaps find an echo in his idiosyncratic painting-style. There is a combination of dynamic energy and close control in the way he blocks in the form and colour of his animal subjects, before working up the vivid details that give his pictures such personality and charm.
In his paintings he conjures up an Aboriginal arcadia, where animals – often of mythic proportions – engage with the viewer as equals, neither their fur nor their feathers creating a barrier to direct and immediate connection.
Brown’s work was included in the recent Cultural Warriors exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.
This is his first international exhibition.