Features

You’ve enjoyed a lengthy career in art and design. Is there anything else in your life that you have been as passionate about?

Slightly before [the art] I was really into rock-climbing. Around 15,16,17, right up to college. When I left school I actually wanted to be a rock-climber. I kind of fell into art college, I almost went to art college by mistake and if I wasn’t an artist and designer I think I would have ended up doing something like that, I was really into mountaineering and other outdoor pursuits and was also into skating during the seventies which I later came back to.

Has that fascination for the outdoors influenced your use of camouflage in your artwork at all?

Quite possibly but my family has a military background and when I soul-searched as to why I like camouflage so much that’s what I came back to. Various things obviously happened along the way, like punk happened- vintage army fatigues; people like Echo & the Bunnymen; locals to me in Liverpool with a big, strong ex-army look, all these little things contribute to my camo obsession, right down to playing with Action Man as a kid.

Camouflage has become such a regular feature in modern streetwear design, you see it everywhere. Are you surprised by that, given that when you started working with camo it was not so common?

I think that Hardy [Blechman] who set up Maharishi has been the man who’s really pushed camo into the civilian domain. It’s not really seen as being a military thing anymore. His attitude is that camouflage should almost be given back to civilians. The idea of camouflage in modern warfare is nonsense now anyway (laughs). Its become a uniform, its become a standard when in fact it doesn’t actually do anything in modern warfare. Hiding is not any longer about hiding behind a bush when you have long range missiles etcetera. What do you need camo for when it’s a guy sitting in a tank or in a room somewhere init?

You’re currently maintaining both corporate work with the graphic design side of what you do alongside the more personal artworks that you exhibit. Is there a plan to eventually focus entirely on your personal artwork?

I suppose there is a master plan there that would go something like that. At the moment I’m very happy to be doing both. Doing the art feeds back into the commercial graphics and it goes the other way too. So what I’m doing here [with the touring art exhibition] is purely as an experiment of my personal work and it then feeds back into what I do with Addict or with a skateboard for Destructo. It keeps me fresh and I cant ignore the commercial work that comes into my studio because a lot of the work is for people I’ve been working with for more than ten years.

I suppose that designing for streetwear and skateboard brands is the kind of work that many designers dream of…

I’ve been very lucky in my career to get connected with good people and I’ve always done pretty much what I want to.

So you don’t find yourself in situations where you’re working to strict design briefs?

Occasionally I’ll do some very straight (for want of a better word) work for the BBC for instance. But those people will come to me because I’ll give them straight-but funky. I can act to the brief on one level and give the client exactly what they want but I can make it funky and in my own style. And that’s why people come to me because they know that I’m flexible. Some jobs I’m not at all precious about, so if they say “change the colour” I change the colour.

I suppose there’s not going to be too many clients coming to you who are not aware of the look and feel of your work and that’s what they’re after in the first place…

Yeah people come to me for my style. They see my work on my website or wherever. You obviously get people who can look past that and want you to push it further and then you have those who want you to do something that you did last year.

Is the Swifty design operation always a solo endeavour or do you have a team working under you?

No, it’s all solo. I mean I have been through all of that. I started out solo in the early nineties, by the mid nineties I had a big studio employing people. I realised after a little while that that wasn’t me. I had a few things happen, a couple of twists of fate and a big client went under which meant a big portion of my revenue was cut. I always had a flexible attitude to the studio whereby I had people working for me but they were free to do work for other people and use the studio’s facilities for their work. So naturally as my staff started going off to pursue their careers I didn’t replace them and just downgraded slowly over a couple of years. I then decided that I didn’t want the commuter life anymore and eventually moved my studio back home where I’ve been ever since.

I’ve got a fair bit of experience working from home and find that it’s a situation of pros and cons. On one hand you have the convenience and comfort factor but on the other hand there are a lot of distractions. How does this setup work for you?

To me ‘a lifestyle’ is one of those funny things. If you’re in the creative industries you can afford to life a lifestyle that a lot of people aspire to. I work in a shed at the end of the garden so I only have a thirty foot walk to work but once I get into the shed I am in the zone. What I love is that I can knock off at five or six o’clock and have dinner with me kids, I can read me little boy a story and he goes to bed, I can hang out with me partner and watch a bit of TV and do all the things that people do and then at midnight if I feel like doing a bit of work I’m back in there.

A lot of the work that you produce is very iconic and when I look at the Soup labels that you create for example, that is a very British thing that we identify with here in Australia. However in other parts of the world they don’t have the same British heritage and didn’t grow up with these kind of products. Do you think that because of this some of your work is perhaps lost in translation?

Of course…

Does that make it difficult to translate your work into other parts of the world?

Well this is one of the first international shows that I’ve done where we’re trying this out. We don’t know until we try. I purposely didn’t bring a lot of my work that is much more nostalgic and British. I have a show in the UK this May which is very British because in London people will get it but I purposely left a lot of that work at home and that’s why I created the Swifty Vegemite style, because I wanted to touch base with a brand here that everyone knows.

And this tour is also going to Indonesia so are there plans to do something similar for that show?

Oh yeah we have a brand in mind for Jakarta, it’s a drink.

So tell me about the exhibition that you’re touring this time around…

Well camouflage and the Swifty brand are recurring themes. I kinda knew that this [Swifty brand logos] would travel here and camo is a universal language like we touched on before. Because this gallery is so big it was a good opportunity to do some bigger pieces hence the Roys camo, I’d done one of those previously at home and wanted to try some different colours.

What media are you working with mostly now?

It’s a heady mixture of spray paint, all the Hoys Camo pieces are done with Montana and I’ve got my brands that I like. The boys turned me onto Krink so I’m using that now. I’ve always been mad on the drip, everyone is mad on drips. Funnily enough from a graffiti perspective the drip was a bit frowned upon in earlier days because it meant that you didn’t have the technique but now it’s become synonymous with the whole…I like it in art terms as well if you look at Jasper Johns and you look at some old Pop-abstract expressionism, I like taking it back. In terms of art my influences are across the board.

And with your preference for working with aerosol today do you have any background in graffiti art?

No. I mean I’ve been cutting out stencils for twenty years. I was one of the first graphic designers to start cutting out stencils and use stencils in my work, not in terms of street art but in my commercial graphics work. In the very early days of Photoshop scanners, the minute you could input something like that you could cut out a stencil, spray it and then scan it in- the very early days of Photoshop 1 and 2 and black and white scanners, the technology helped liberate the way you could create artwork for print.

In terms of your work for brands like Addict where the market is predominantly youth, how do you stay relevant to a younger audience with different influences to your own and do you think that the artist has to make a conscious effort to stay in touch with current trends?

Well as a commercial artist on the graphics tip you are responsible for your output and it’s your responsibility to depict the current state of play. You have to observe and you have to be aware of culture and trends and style going on around you. I’ve been quite fortunate in that I’ve always had my own agenda in a lot of ways. I mean yes, everyone follows some kind of fashion, it’s hard not to. Especially in London at the start of the Acid Jazz scene which I’m still quite hooked into, I grew up with that scene and started by doing work for people like Giles Peterson and I grew with the scene and so therefore I am part of that originator thing and then you’re not following trends because you’re making them. Now you have a slightly different situation because there are no trends anymore, there are no movements. I see kids now wondering around in Vans and skinny jeans and grungy t-shirts and scarves or whatever. I can look at them and say that’s a bit of Punk from 1976 and his jeans are kinda circa 1981. To the kids now it’s just a cool look but I can look at it and know where it all comes from because I’ve got that breadth of knowledge from late sixties/early seventies when I started reaching the age where I could observe stuff. All the music and culture that you’ve absorbed goes into this… well the brain is an amazing thing really, it stores all this stuff and it just comes out so if someone says to me “I want a skate/grungy look” I know what they’re talking about.

So what’s the next Swifty move?

Well this is very new for me. I’ve never really concentrated on shows. I’ve always just done my thing in the studio. I’ve produced artwork over the years and done a few little shows here and there but this is me now for the next ten to twenty years, this mixed with the graphics. I suppose as I get older I’d like to hope that I can retire quietly somewhere just doing some painting. The graphics is great but as I get older I find it more waring because I don’t want to have to answer to anyone and that’s why this is important to me, I can just get on with it. I’m doing so much travelling this year, I have four [international] shows already lined up and maybe it’s just the start and I am at the cusp of a new thing.

For extensive insight into Swiftys illustrious career and more information on his upcoming exhibitions head over to swifty.co.uk. If your interested in owning any of the works from the Australian exhibition make sure you check projectmidas.com and follow their links through to their store we're bot prints and painted works are available.


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