Artist biography

Trevin Tomlinson is an experimental mixed-media artist whose lifelong practice is rooted in lived experience and shaped by Birmingham, the city where he has lived throughout his life. A Fine Art graduate since 2006, his work explores the intersections between personal experience, everyday life and the wider social and political landscape.

Working across different materials and methods, he responds to subjects including political unrest, inequality, greed, environmental fragility and the pressures of contemporary life. His own experiences of mental health also form an important thread, with art providing a means of processing thoughts, emotions and experiences that can be difficult to articulate through words.

Although he values aesthetics, his practice is driven primarily by the act of making itself. The process becomes a form of therapy, reflection and release, allowing ideas to emerge and develop without necessarily beginning with a predetermined outcome.

His work can be understood as a visual expression of an active and questioning mind. Personal concerns sit alongside wider anxieties about society and the planet, creating work that moves between the intimate and the political. Through experimentation and process, he makes visible something of how he experiences, questions and responds to the world around him.