From the legendary
Tank Girl
to live-action animations with
Gorillaz
, a Chinese contemporary opera to an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, artist
Jamie Hewlett is one of the most energetic figures of contemporary pop culture
.
With influences ranging from hip hop to zombie slasher movies, Hewlett emerged in the mid-1990s as co-creator of the zeitgeist-defining
comic. With then-roommate Damon Albarn, he went on to create the
groundbreaking cartoon band Gorillaz
. The award-winning virtual pop group of animated characters is a truly global phenomenon. Gorillaz have topped charts around the world, toured the globe from San Diego to Syria, and picked up hundreds of millions of streams and record sales along the way.
Since then, Hewlett has continued to collaborate with Albarn on projects including an elaborate staging of the Chinese novel
Monkey: Journey to the West
by Wu Cheng’en, complete with circus acrobats, Shaolin monks, and Chinese singers. In 2006, he was named
Designer of the Year
by the Design Museum in London, and in 2009, Hewlett and Albarn won a
BAFTA
for their animated Monkey sequence for the Beijing Olympic Games. In 2015
The Suggestionists
, an exhibition of prints at the
Saatchi Gallery
in London, demonstrated an exciting new direction in Hewlett’s practice.
This special edition celebrating TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary updates Hewlett’s first major monograph with
around 30 brand new pieces
. The book illustrates his thrilling creative journey with more than
400 artworks from the
era through Gorillaz and up to the present day
. Through stories, characters, strips, and sketches, we trace Hewlett’s exceptional capacity for invention and celebrate a
polymath artist who refuses to rest on his laurels
, or to be pigeonholed into a particular practice.