{"id":120708,"date":"2025-11-04T05:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T05:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/120708\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T05:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T05:34:07","slug":"pen-paper-alex-clayton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/120708\/","title":{"rendered":"Pen & Paper: Alex Clayton"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0fakemink<\/a>, EsDeeKid and Slimzee joining Evian Christ for a legendary TranceParty night. This time, it\u2019s a two-night event (\u2018TP Weekender\u2019) and a road sign greets you at the entrance, covered in British-Finnish artist Alex Clayton\u2019s unmistakable airbrushed figures, recognizable from the previous club night\u2019s posters and designs.<\/p>\n

Clayton is an enigmatic but prolific figure in the underground music scene. He\u2019s produced commissions for\u00a0Yung Lean<\/a>\u00a0and 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\u00a0Ice Spice<\/a>. Appearing in paintings and across T-shirts, football jerseys and beanies, his figures stand solitary, locked in their own worlds, or tangled together \u2014 often wielding swords or emerging from dense crowds to grin mischievously at the viewer. \n<\/p>\n

Encountering Clayton\u2019s artwork at a night out, rather than in a white-cube gallery space, feels fitting. \u201cMost of the people I meet and interact with come through music,\u201d says Clayton, when asked about the art and music scenes in London. \u201cThe music scene is infinitely more connected, friendly, passionate and willing to experiment to continue pushing the envelope forward.\u201d <\/p>\n

His practice reflects this multidisciplinary energy: it\u2019s normal for his presentations to blur distinctions between painting and sound, creating a shared and more embodied, experience for viewing or listening.\u00a0Earlier this year, Clayton presented a series of painted football jerseys from Helsinki\u2019s local clubs with audiovisual elements, including original soundtracks by artists like\u00a0Clams Casino<\/a> during Helsinki Music Week. \n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of unwritten boring codes in the art world on the whole,\u201d Clayton says. \u201cComing from a place where I absolutely adore music, it\u2019s 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 \u2013 it can truly be an extension of the artistic experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For this edition of\u00a0Pen & 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A queue of Londoners is forming outside of Corsica Studios on a Friday night. The air is thick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-120708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}