Slawn in front of the mural
(Picture: Ed Peacock / Evening Standard)“I wanted to put a dick on this thing,” Slawn whispers into the phone. He has just come down from the lift he spent two days on, spray painting a mural for UGG. A huge wall by Shoreditch Boxpark now stands half green, half pink, and covered with the 21 year old artist’s signature, squishy cartoon faces.
If you walk by, you will see it is sans-penis. “I would have, but you know what happened today? I’m peeing in the corner of the street. Some kids were walking by and I ran, kind of peed on myself, and then had to think - why would I put a dick on the wall if there’s kids walking by?” he says. It was the most deliberation he put into the process. Slawn is a man lead by instinct. “They asked me for a sketch. I couldn’t provide one,” he says of the wall colour matched to the new UGG rain boots. “I just trusted my gut and it came out amazing!”
So far, his follow-any-impulse default has turned up trumps. He has sold paintings to Lil Uzi, modelled for Frank Ocean, and is pumping out streams of special projects that have seen his work cover everything from London buses to a classic Mercedes. He only completed the move to London from Nigeria in 2017, and is still finishing a Graphic Design degree at Middlesex University (“I’m just shit at it. School doesn’t work for me,” he quips). What comes as the greatest surprise, though, is that Slawn only started painting during the first lockdown. Having got caught up doing too many drugs, he decided to try using the MDMA comedown time wisely. “I mean you can eat,” he says. “But I went and bought a canvas and just tried it, and I was like – that actually looks good.”
He still sounds shocked. Two years later, and Slawn remains to be convinced by his sell-out canvases, which range from hand-held size squares to huge, full wall scale pieces. They all follow the same formula: spray painted, pop shade backgrounds with thick black marker faces, dice and (yes) a fair few penises drawn on top. “I personally don’t see worth in it, so I feel like I’m scamming people. That’s why I call myself a con artist,” he says.
Thankfully others do. The late Virgil Abloh, in particular, is the one Slawn says he owes it all to. “He faked it for me ‘till I made it. He kept telling people I was cool until everyone believed I was cool,” he says. “He didn’t need to do that. But he did.”
He worked for Abloh’s brand Off White by chance. A friend had called on him to do some pieces for a photoshoot, but he began connecting dots when all garments were Off White. Then Abloh popped up on his phone: “Virgil texts me like ‘yo what the fuck’. I was like ‘I know, I did not know,’” he says. Slawn also counts the designer, who until he passed was creative director of Louis Vuitton Menswear, as his greatest collector. “That was my big bro. Virgil probably has five or six [pieces] of my best work.” His cheeky, chipper tone has turned solemn. Following Abloh’s death after a two-year battle with cancer last November, he took to Instagram to put the loss in words. “Virgil Abloh was the African Super Hero we needed, a real life one. He didn’t need to be around you or next to you for him to touch your life and this was his super power. I am happy to have been able to call you a friend of mine,” he wrote, under a photo of the pair together on a night out in Brixton.
But Slawn won’t let it slow him down. Actually, it is time to level up. What can top a wall? “I want to do a plane! A Boeing 767 or some shit.” There is also a grounded plan for the next steps, too – find a gallery to represent him. And he’s happy to get creative in making that happen.
“I sent bare people to the Saatchi Gallery to go and ask for Slawn pieces, even though there wasn’t any there,” he says. The reception was frosty. “They just got upset. Then they had to close down for the day, because there was too many people there – I think that might have been a bad move.”
So we will not be seeing him off the Kings Road. But the chances of a Shoreditch gallerist taking a liking to the 20 ft (and a bit) wall covered in his characters? They look pretty high.
