In an airy but compact studio high in a converted Victorian bus factory in Islington, the artist known as Slawn is showing me around the kind of work that led to his being tapped to design this year’s Brit Awards statuette.
His north-London space is filled with people (unidentified hipsters on beanbags tapping at laptops), boxed superhero figurines, canvases stacked against the wall and depictions of the 22-year-old’s nemesis: the Nigerian policeman. There are also two man-sized sculptures of rabbits, shaped like penises, which might be a shock for the London fashion store that commissioned them to mark the Chinese Year of the Rabbit. And there’s some royal porn.
Not pictured: the aeroplane “in some airfield somewhere” that features daubings of dicks “on the underside of the wing. It hasn’t flown yet, but I tried to get them to fly over the palace.”
Sir Peter Blake and Dame Vivienne Westwood – previous reinterpreters of the Brits’ figurine of Britannia – this is not. It’s not even Damien Hirst, who had the job in 2013. “These are my new paintings,” says the Lagos-born artist, who was championed by the late Virgil Abloh and is previously best known for viral, skater-inspired graffiti that suggests Keith Haring on ketamine. He’s pulling out canvas after colourful canvas slathered with thick swirls of acrylic paint. “I’m just trying to learn how to use new mediums – I don’t know how to use oil paint.”
Many feature caricatures of police in the country he left, seemingly in some haste, in 2018, with some of the uniformed figures he describes as “the enemy” toting AK-47s. “They all carry them – every single one. Even a traffic cop. That’s why I left! It was the police that ran me out [of the country]. That’s why I’m painting them now – the constant PTSD of the Nigerian policeman.”
Another of the crudely daubed paintings features the Nigerian flag and the figure of a politician. “It’s a depiction of the era of #EndSARS,” he explains of the 2020 campaign against security forces brutality. “The time when Nigerian policemen were killing people that looked like me. The thing is, to Nigerian people, if you don’t have a job in a bank or blah blah blah, it means you’re doing fraud. And if they find out you’re doing fraud, a lot of the time they just kill you.”
The police ran me out of Nigeria
A lean, antic, cherubic figure in a teddy-bear hat and black streetwear, some designed by his “big brother” Clint, designer-owner of cult brand Corteiz, Slawn bounces around his studio. It’s lunchtime and a big bag of Wagamama has arrived for him and his team. But he’s happy to delay eating to be hospitable.
“This one’s a bit more controversial,” he says, pulling out a bigger canvas. “That’s Harry and Megan. It’s a bit crazy.” It is indeed: the spare and his wife, depicted naked and in flagrante with, of course, Nigerian policemen looking on. “They’ve made Harry an agent of mischief. This is my depiction of how Nigerian people behave with the news and media outlets. ’Cause Harry and Megan are basically f***ing themselves, and Nigerians are just watching and it’s none of their business.”
He estimates this piece took a day’s work, on and off, but only “two or three hours” added up. “It looks like a kid did it,” he says, proudly. There’s no confirmed buyer as yet. “A lot of people have requested it already, but I feel like I need to give it to the right person – to someone in the royal family.”
If I was interested, how much would it cost me?
“This stuff goes for maybe 20 to 25,000.” So, £8,000 per hour’s work – pretty good. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it? But it’s more that I’ve spent a good 20 years experiencing the whole thing to get to this point. So for me it’s not three hours, it’s 20 years. It’s the life I’ve lived.”
Before coming to the UK five years ago, when he started a graphic design course at Middlesex University, Olaolu Slawn was well known on the skate scene in Lagos. In his mid-teens he worked in Wafflesncream, Nigeria’s first skate shop, graduating from shop assistant to in-house designer, his laptop his medium. Then he launched a streetwear apparel brand, Motherlan. But it wasn’t until the UK’s first lockdown in 2020 that he began to paint.
Quite the ride, and rise, for a young artist who’s also a new(ish) dad – son Beau is seven months old. Even Slawn seems surprised by the Brits commission, which is even more radical than this year’s televised ceremony being held, for the first time in 30 years of ITV broadcast, on a weekend.
“One day I got the message: they want to have a meeting,” he says of the awards’ organising committee. “And I was like, ‘No way this is happening!’ I never assumed people like that would want anything to do with me. Because one, I’m Nigerian. And two, my work is really controversial.”
But happen it did. Mercifully for a cultural establishment body charged with giving out gongs in front of a mainstream Saturday night telly audience, Slawn forswore, in his search for design ideas, his fondness for rendering penises, and instead focused on another key inspiration: the Marvel comics on which he grew up
Taking a cue from tri-faced The Living Tribunal, a cosmic deity co-created by Stan Lee in the mid-Sixties, Slawn’s statue has three expressions, representing “Opportunity”, “Gratitude” and “Celebration”.
“Then I took the hat off as well,” he says of Britannia’s battle helmet. “In Nigeria, before you greet people, you take your hat off. I’m not from here, I’ve not grown up here, but you’ve given me the opportunity to do this. So I’ll show my respect in my own way.”
All of this, he says, came to him immediately in a figure he’s called Bobo, Yoruba slang for boy or child and the nickname given to him by his family. “That’s why it’s bronze as well – because a lot of the sculptures that are here from Nigeria that are in the British Museum are bronze.”
Does he mean the Benin Bronzes, looted from southern Nigeria by imperial forces in the 19th century? And so, another political statement?
“Yes, again,” he nods firmly of an award that is also “heavy, like a weapon”, ambitions blessed with the Brits’ seal of approval.
“Slawn’s work is incredible and powerful, and we’ve been blown away by what he has created,” Atlantic Records’ Damian Christian, chair of the 2023 Brit Awards, said in a statement. “[His] design is bold, exciting and in the moment, and represents what we’re trying to achieve with this year’s ceremony.” While that might not mean giving non-male identifying artists a fair shake – genderless categories have resulted in an all-male Artist of the Year nominees list – other points, it seems, are being made.
Slawn’s work is incredible and powerful, and we’ve been blown away by what he has created
2023 Brit Awards chair Damian Christian
Tonight, Slawn will be in attendance at London’s O2 arena, sharing a table with his good friend Clint. He insists he’s not nervous at the prospect of seeing his awards lifted triumphantly by good friend Central Cee, or by The 1975 or Taylor Swift. Nor is he done with music.
“I’d love to do a pop [album] cover. Harry Styles? I’d love to do that,” he says. “Something that people outside of my area would see and be like, ‘That is so sick’. Like, the Brit Awards were not supposed to be there [for me]. But something came together and something beautiful was made.”
The 2023 Brit Awards take place on Saturday 11 February at the O2 Arena in London