Meet The Trunk Of Funk: Inside Gareth Tristan Evans’ Gold Leaf Urban Geisha Series
Step inside Dane Manor Fine Art's collection and one name stands apart from the gallery's oils and traditional prints: The Trunk Of Funk, the working name of British mixed media artist Gareth Tristan Evans. His pieces are less painted than assembled — built up in layers of photography, hand-applied gold leaf, vintage Japanese stamps and lacquered relief tiles until each portrait gains real physical depth. For collectors drawn to work with genuine texture, and a story behind every layer, his is one of the most distinctive names among the 35-plus artists represented at Dane Manor. It's the kind of work that rewards a closer look — details reveal themselves slowly, the way a photograph might under different light.
From a Welsh Valley to a Macclesfield Studio
Gareth Tristan Evans was born in Singapore and spent his childhood in a remote Welsh valley before settling in Macclesfield, Cheshire, where he now works. He spent two decades building a career in the music industry before returning to art roughly six years ago, eventually setting aside commercial considerations altogether to make work purely on his own terms. That instinct shows: Evans has described himself as “a detail obsessive,” insisting that every piece leaving his studio meets a quality threshold he sets for himself rather than the market. It is a background — part classical education, part 2000AD comics, part East-meets-West upbringing — that gives his work a genuine tension between the ephemeral and the enduring.
Why ‘The Trunk Of Funk’?
The name is not a marketing flourish. It comes from Evans' side project restoring battered vintage suitcases into fully working sound systems — old cases rewired with modern electronics, functional and strange in equal measure. It is a fitting emblem for his art practice too: a willingness to combine old-world materials and iconography with distinctly contemporary techniques, letting neither dominate the other.
Inside the Urban Geisha Series
Evans' best-known and most acclaimed body of work is Urban Geisha — a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional Japanese geisha figure, built from portrait photography, decorative pattern, street art influences and Eastern symbolism. Kimonos are constructed from vintage textile motifs, circular framing recurs across the series, and titles are often deliberately enigmatic. At Dane Manor Fine Art, his intricately layered pieces — including Patience Soul, Pilgrim, Sphinx Mekhat and Porcelain — are available as limited edition prints, with Deluxe canvas editions offered for several of his most detailed compositions.
Materials and Process: Photography Meets Gold Leaf
Each Urban Geisha piece begins with original photography before Evans builds it up by hand: 24-karat gold leaf and copper foil, vintage Japanese Hanko stamps and postage stamps, and 3D lacquered relief tiles, layered over traditional pencil and brushwork. Nothing is resolved in a single gesture — compositions are constructed gradually, in the manner of collage, until the surface itself has genuine depth to it. It is a hybrid method that draws as much from photography and digital composition as it does from traditional draughtsmanship, and it is precisely this combination that has made his work increasingly sought after by contemporary collectors in the UK and abroad.
A Rising Name for Collectors
Mixed media work occupies an interesting position for new collectors: more textured and tactile than a straightforward print, but more accessible — in price and in scale — than an original painting. Evans' limited edition prints carry the hand-finished, considered quality of his originals while remaining genuinely collectible, which is part of why interest in his work has grown steadily among buyers looking for something with more presence on the wall than a standard framed print. Deluxe editions, in particular, suit collectors wanting the fuller physical texture of his gold leaf and relief work at a larger scale. Evans has also built a considerable following through his own channels — his work is shared on Instagram as @thetrunkoffunk — and has been profiled by regional arts press including Cheshire's Great British Life, further evidence of a name gaining real traction beyond gallery walls.
Shop The Trunk Of Funk at Dane Manor Fine Art
The Trunk Of Funk's limited edition prints — including pieces from the Urban Geisha series such as Patience Soul, Pilgrim, Sphinx Mekhat and Porcelain — are available now at Dane Manor Fine Art, alongside the gallery's wider roster of more than 35 represented artists. Visit danemanorfineart.com/artists/the-trunk-of-funk to explore the full collection, or browse the gallery's other mixed media and contemporary artists for more work in a similar vein.
Comments