Alexander 葉 L. Brown

INFO

Name	Alexander 葉 L. Brown (he/him)
Also known as	Wrought Material
Born	1990
Country of Birth	Aotearoa
Place of Residence	Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Artform	Visual arts, Music, Zines, Design
Decades Active	2010s, 2020s

ABOUT

Alexander 葉 L. Brown is a Singaporean Chinese and Pākehā visual artist and graphic designer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Inspired by heavy metal and punk album artwork, Brown’s detailed, hand-drawn illustrations are predominantly found in DIY, zinemaking and underground music spaces. He also operates an art studio, publishing label and booking agency for underground music under the name Wrought Material, which focuses on “obsessively crafted zines, books, tapes and records as well as hosting exhibitions, gigs and tours”

Brown describes his arts practice and career as “all very DIY”. After regularly attending local underground gigs from the age of 13, Brown started contacting musicians via MSN Messenger and MySpace, asking to draw free logos for their bands. Since the late 2010s, he has continued to work in music packaging design, contributing artwork to a range of local and international underground, metal and punk bands. Reflecting on the experience of primarily creating art for bands and labels, Brown considers his work as part of a “greater visual canon” and refers to his zines as a “means of connecting with people”.

In 2012, Brown was included in his first exhibition — a Los Angeles-based group exhibition, Invocation, which focused on "the modern fringe of extreme art and music". He has since exhibited his work in a variety of shows in both the United States and Aotearoa. Brown has maintained a clear design language throughout his arts career, primarily using black and white ink on paper and hand-cut/pasted layouts to illustrate surrealist, symbolist and sometimes occultist works. He has previously described his works as “greyscale horrors” and reflects on his style as “derived from [metal or punk] musical lineage”. With a deliberately lo-fi DIY aesthetic, his interests in underground and subversive artforms are evident. Brown also mentions his mixed-heritage background as a source of creative inspiration, referring to his visits to Singapore in his youth and “being immersed in cultural iconography not as readily available/seen in Aotearoa at the time” as shaping his work.

Towards the end of 2017, Brown created Wrought Material — a collective of underground artists and musicians who Brown felt were not “well-represented in Tāmaki or even Aotearoa as a whole”. The collective launched in March 2018 with a group exhibition at Monster Valley that was described as “an exhibition of paintings, drawings, collage and print, and launch for amorphous art collective and publishing concern, Wrought Material”. Though still maintaining strong collective and community sensibilities, Wrought Material is run solely by Brown as an “all-encompassing production label” whereby he continues to curate group exhibitions, publish zines, comics, cassettes and vinyl, and book gigs for bands.

In subsequent Wrought Material exhibitions in 2019 and 2021, a key theme began to emerge with the collective “exploring, showcasing and celebrating the intersections of underground music and visual art from Aotearoa and abroad”. Forging global connections between underground artists is a core curatorial choice for Wrought Material, with many of their exhibitions weaving together work from the United States, Japan, Australia, England and Aotearoa. Brown’s most recent 2023 group exhibition took place at Singapore DIY art space and shop, Shrub and introduced a variety of Aotearoa creative works to the Singaporean arts scene. Notable artists featured at Shrub include Nathan Joe, Callum Rooney, Xoë Hall and Lindsay Yee.

Brown also performs in the bands Distant Fear and Vigil, and was the tour manager for the 2024 New Zealand Tours of Japanese band Kruelty and Australian band Kilat. He is currently exploring the “ongoing personal reckoning in terms of being a mixed-heritage person and belonging or lack thereof” in his work.