A queue of Londoners is forming outside of Corsica Studios on a Friday night. The air is thick with smoke, rising from jackets wrapped around bodies preparing for eight straight hours of music, the likes of fakemink, EsDeeKid and Slimzee joining Evian Christ for a legendary TranceParty night. This time, it’s a two-night event (‘TP Weekender’) and a road sign greets you at the entrance, covered in British-Finnish artist Alex Clayton’s unmistakable airbrushed figures, recognizable from the previous club night’s posters and designs.
Clayton is an enigmatic but prolific figure in the underground music scene. He’s produced commissions for Yung Lean and his limited edition, hand-painted T-shirts sell out almost instantly. His distinctive imagery features on album covers for artists like Bloody Shield and in screen visuals for Ice Spice. Appearing in paintings and across T-shirts, football jerseys and beanies, his figures stand solitary, locked in their own worlds, or tangled together — often wielding swords or emerging from dense crowds to grin mischievously at the viewer.
Encountering Clayton’s artwork at a night out, rather than in a white-cube gallery space, feels fitting. “Most of the people I meet and interact with come through music,” says Clayton, when asked about the art and music scenes in London. “The music scene is infinitely more connected, friendly, passionate and willing to experiment to continue pushing the envelope forward.”
His practice reflects this multidisciplinary energy: it’s normal for his presentations to blur distinctions between painting and sound, creating a shared and more embodied, experience for viewing or listening. Earlier this year, Clayton presented a series of painted football jerseys from Helsinki’s local clubs with audiovisual elements, including original soundtracks by artists like Clams Casino during Helsinki Music Week.
“There are a lot of unwritten boring codes in the art world on the whole,” Clayton says. “Coming from a place where I absolutely adore music, it’s a no brainer for me to merge these worlds as much as possible. The way listening to a piece of music with visuals opens up infinite combinations is amazing – it can truly be an extension of the artistic experience.”
For this edition of Pen & Paper, Hypeart caught up with the artist about navigating the art world, his multidisciplinary approach to creating and getting obliterated by strobes at the club.
