The connor brothers

With their reworkings of vintage Mills & Boon book covers accompanied by witty texts that capture the preoccupations of our millennial world, The Connor Brothers burst onto the art scene in 2013.

- Rachel Leedham

The Missouri-born twins, Franklyn and Brendan, were raised within a secretive Christian cult called ‘The Family’, running away at 16 and travelling across America on freight trains before settling in Brooklyn. Their art, they explained, came about as they tried to ‘make sense of the world’ they’d been deprived of.

All pretty compelling stuff. Except that, just like a Mills & Boon romance, the story was pure fiction. The pair, Mike Snelle and James Golding, are in fact childhood friends who both share troubled pasts: Liverpool-born Mike had suffered from bouts of severe depression since childhood, while James, who was raised in Cambridge, had battled with anxiety, resulting in heroine addiction and run-ins with the police. The fictional pseudonym, which they maintained for two years, was developed to shield them from the public glare.