Known as The Connor Brothers, two British friends first entered the art scene as fictional American twins Franklyn and Brendan Connor in 2010.
After coming to prominence, they maintained their anonymity with a dramatic imagined biography based on being brought up in a Californian cult known as The Family. Appealing to celebrities and runaways, the story goes that they escaped that life at the age of 16, traveling as hobos on trains across America to New York where they gave themselves an eventual, if fabulist, address in Brooklyn.
By exploring their surroundings and sharing their discoveries with each other through their notebooks and a fantasy find of a cache of Mills and Boons romance novels, The Connor Brothers began educating themselves and creating their artworks together. Through this, the story goes, they developed a fantasy methodology to understanding the outside world.
Shrouded in mystery and surrounded by gossip their work was shown in Australia and Los Angeles, then introduced to a New York audience at the Outsider Art Fair by Marion Harris in a sell-out show in 2014. Sold without true attribution, buyers were given advance notice that their real identity would be revealed weeks later in a major feature by Mick Brown in London's Telegraph Magazine. Since exposing their true identity, The Connor Brothers have politicized their work, joining the stable of Banksy and similar for philanthropic causes reaching record prices internationally at galleries and auctions.
Fusing truth and fiction, pulp graphic novels with classic Penguin Shakespeare titles, it was almost impossible to separate reality from fantasy. This obsession with truth seems particularly relevant in the current climate of fake news, post truth and social media obsession.