Lungley Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Brian Dawn Chalkley. The exhibition titled Angels Suffer Too - Part 2 opens on Friday 5th June 2026, 11am - 8pm to coincide with London Gallery Weekend and runs simultaneously alongside their exhibition at Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland. Brian Dawn Chalkley (b. 1948) is a British artist whose embroidery-based works form a deeply personal and poetic exploration of gender, sexuality, identity, and the fragile boundaries between dreams and nightmares. For over four decades, Chalkley has investigated what it means to perform and inhabit identity, with their female alter ego “Dawn” a...
Lungley Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Brian Dawn Chalkley. The exhibition titled Angels Suffer Too - Part 2 opens on Friday 5th June 2026, 11am - 8pm to coincide with London Gallery Weekend and runs simultaneously alongside their exhibition at Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland.
Brian Dawn Chalkley (b. 1948) is a British artist whose embroidery-based works form a deeply personal and poetic exploration of gender, sexuality, identity, and the fragile boundaries between dreams and nightmares. For over four decades, Chalkley has investigated what it means to perform and inhabit identity, with their female alter ego “Dawn” a central figure in both their life and art since the mid-1990s. While Chalkley also creates expressive, melancholic portraits painted with a soft brush, it is their textile works that have become particularly distinctive. These pieces are executed on humble domestic materials, most often cotton pillowcases or stretched cotton fabric using a combination of pencil and ink drawing, handwritten text, and intricate embroidery.
The resulting artworks possess a raw, folk-art quality: flat perspectives, direct storytelling, and an apparent naivety that belies their psychological complexity. Scenes frequently depict abandoned seaside resorts, desolate parks, isolated figures, androgynous characters, and surreal or violent encounters. Embroidered elements, sometimes delicate, sometimes deliberately crude, bring texture and tactility to the surface, turning the fabric into a kind of diary or dream map.
Many works blend image and text seamlessly. Handwritten phrases or fragments of narrative are stitched directly into the cloth, creating layered stories that feel both intimate and unsettling. Motifs recur across the years: figures in dresses carrying guns, wild and tangled “washing lines” of coloured thread, lonely animals, and dreamlike landscapes that hover between beauty and menace. Black humour often surfaces alongside melancholy, reflecting the absurdity and savagery of existence.
