Based in Auckland, Mike Brookfield has designed and printed since the early 1980's using the label VIrus.

The Auckland Museum Applied Arts collection of Virus garments featured here was bought in 1997. They feature the imagery for which Virus became well known: sperm, poisonous spiders, images of cultists like Aleister Crowley.

click on each image to view image gallery

Mike Brookfield worked with cult musician Jed Town as part of the art collective Fetus Productions. Mike had graduated from Elam School of Art at Auckland University in 1983 and the two consciously challenged the concept of music and art. The images were confronting and often shocking, using pictures of medical deformity at a time when people were not used to seeing such things. Throughout the 1980's they operated as an audio-visual company, releasing albums and staging multi-media exhibitions. Based in Sydney for a time, the pair began presenting their artwork on t-shirts.

Brookfield "We didn't really have a negatively morbid fascination in it. At that time I think people were overly concerned with a fabricated beauty and not wanting to look at anything that was a little bit more disturbing."

"We did a series of t-shirts that we sold outside this bank in Kings Cross on Friday and Saturday nights. There were lots of people who'd been drinking and the whole thing created a reaction. It was almost like doing a live music performance on the street."

Mike went on to establish Virus, a clothing outlet on Karangahape Road in Auckland New Zealand, continuing the tradition of bizarre and surreal imagery. During the 1990's, Virus sold into US stores such as Bloomingdales and customers included Billy Idol, Madonna and Cher.

Today their Venus Range is available throughout New Zealand in a range of designer boutiques: http://www.virusclothing.com

From an article in Pavement magazine June/July 2002 and conversations between Mike Brookfield and Jean Clarkson July 2002

Read more about Mike Brookfield in the Profile section