The Shape of Things to Come

sunil pawar vs junya watanabe! from slingshot london on Vimeo.

Recently I caught up with acclaimed British artist and Creative Director Sunil Pawar. Sunil is one of the finest creatives in the Country, collaborating with the likes of Comme des Garcon, Nokia, Reebok and X-Box. Not content with mixing it up in the Art and Fashion world, Sunil came out of the Soundsystem culture of yesteryear and music is still very much a part of his life and what he does today; be it installations, screen prints or Djing.

So you’ve been involved in the “street art scene” for want of a better phrase. what was it like being in London as a young artist before this new-wave of current culture exploded? Did you graf?

I don’t know, I have never considered myself as part of any scene, its weird, cos I when I first started trying to make a living out of this, a lot of agents/galleries were really confused by me and the style of painting, using spraypaints but not being a graffiti artist, back then my work was termed ‘ethnic’(!) now shits blown up I know a lot of guys have cashed in on the whole street/urban thing, rightly or wrongly I never did which is why I guess I’m not on my bank managers Christmas card list. I never ran the roads with my work proper but was inspired by people like the Chrome Angelz. There’s still lots of wicked stuff out there today…

You have experimented in a variety of forms, mixed media seems to be very much apart of what you do now. Especially in consideration of the X-Box Germany commission, and the Nokia toy piece. can you explain a little more about both of those pieces, how they came about, and where you take your inspiration from in those varying mediums?

The X-Box job was cool, the original plan was to have me up a massive cherrypicker crane in the middle of Hamburg doing a live painting in front of an audience but I think on health and safety grounds they didn’t allow it which was a shame. They wanted me to bring the concept of ‘play’ into a painting, it was quite a strict brief, in the end I took hundreds of photos in my studio throughout the painting process as the piece developed, which was turned into an animation and projected onto walls throughout Germany, I think they got a lot of press coverage which is always a bonus…

The Nokia project is the kinda job I like, ‘cos it was an open brief, it’s kind of like being asked a question that there is no wrong answer to, it was part of a show with other artists, so I wanted to make it real personal to me, I installed a mini sound system in it ( thankyou ebay ) even though is was small it was loud! it rotates on a mini turntable. That link between music and art is really important to me, the integral system featured a thirty minute mix done by myself, you can still download it (HERE). Its always good to sell work but damn I wanted to keep that shit for myself!

You create promo videos for some of your collaborations, recently the Comme des Garcon piece was on Slamxhype. I know that you also work quite heavily on videos, adverts etc. How did you get involved in that element of the Creative Industry?

Yeah, it was all quite by accident, about 12 years ago, I was doing real crappy jobs to pay the bills, building site work, laboring, pretty shit soul destroying stuff in the day and then (much more enjoyable) running the sound in the evenings, I got a day job to put up some library shelves in this house, the house turned out to belong to a well known commercials film director who liked my work, and a year later I started working for them full time which was amazing, I learn’t so much in that time seeing how the creative process worked, six years on I realised how much I missed the painting/illustration side of things, so decided to go it on my own, working under the name Slingshot London (same as my DJing name) to try and concentrate on the two dimensional stuff…

Your style is very signature, when you see your work, it’s instantly recognizable. The use of aerosols, stencils, bold colors, also symmetry is applied quite often to your pieces. what drew you to the use of stencils?

Thanks man, yeah l love the flatness of the colour that using stencils achieve, never really thought about it before but I guess it contrasts well with the textured side of my work, its only a small element of my work but its one that people tend to pick up on, probably cos the whole Stencil Graffiti book thing, that’s cool though…

Stencils have now become synonymous with Street Art. Do you think this detracts from what you do, in that, the medium has now become bastardized to some extent?

Definitely, Its a style I have used and stuck with all the time I have been painting, developing throughout the years and still to this day… I see it as just an instrument that can be used in different ways, say like a guitar, it would be crazy to group Jimi Hendricks and Cliff Richard in the same category cos they both play the same instrument, in the same way that its mad when people bunch together everyone who uses stencils, if that makes sense?!

Yeah without a doubt, I suppose what really distinguishes you now, is the back catalogue of collaborative work you have now done. The stand out brand for me has to be Comme des Garcon. Their runway collections are a little out there, but the mainstay of their collections are often very clean. do you find this juxtaposition challenging? do you change your style to accommodate this?

Yeah I feel stoked to work with those guys, it was linked by Adrian Palengat who is more like a big brother to me than a dealer. I have always been a fan of Commes so its a wicked hook up. Basically Junya goes through my work, selects which paintings he likes, then I break down different elements of the pieces, the patterns, figures, titles etc, then he adds them into his crazy pot of mad crazy tailoring and colouring, I think its a process that works, its kinda surreal that my name features on all the garments, yeah that’s a real honour, I love the idea of bringin’ a bit of my London grimey business to High Fashion!

You DJ also, to end this, i wanted to get your take on cover art, who has really done some great pieces, what stands out? Have you done a album artwork!?

I have just finished doing a piece for the latest Horace Andy / Alpha album which should be coming out any day now, It helps if the product your packaging is quality and luckily the album is the kinda freshness that I would play out…

Few of my favorite covers off the top of my head are the ‘There it is’ album by James Brown and the ‘Soul All Dayer of the Century live’ album. definite things of beauty.

THOSE SPEAKERS!!! Any more furniture/functional collabs in the pipe line!?

MORE BASS THATS THE LAW! fully customised eltax speaker boxes, three way bass reflex 25mm dome 230 watt 4-8ohm biwirable binding posts. produced for the helium west / flawless & co diamonds show, new bond street london. POA

Yeah, I want to carry on to do a whole big m*****f*****in sound system, from the cabs to the amps, paint em up nice and bold.
Its a good feeling when I hook up the speakers I customise and DJ through them, its like bringing everything full circle. The whole process starts with the bassline and ends with the bassline, its as simple as that.

Make sure you check out Slingshot London for more of Sunil’s work and to keep up to date with what he’s working on. If the Dubby, Roots, Hip Hop party anthems are your kinda thing, check out the Slingshot Sound System for Sunil’s mixes and podcasts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Interview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.