Skateboarding fosters artistic creativity to an extent rarely matched by other sports and outdoor pursuits. Shannon Denny meets artist, skater and Slam City collaborator Arran Gregory to find out why
“Any skateboarder ends up being drawn to London like a magnet,” says Arran Gregory. Where you or I might see concrete seating, a handrail and a staircase, a skater sees infinite possibilities. A bench forms the basis for a trick, a rail becomes a surface to slide on and steps offer a whole new way of envisaging and navigating space.
“Skateboarding’s a really good way of mapping out a city,” he says. “We have alternate routes that we take. There’s a route that shoppers have in their heads of London, there’s a tourist route, and then there’s skateboarders. Our route takes us to really random places and backstreets. We’ve got this weird map in our heads.”
For going on 25 years, that map has included Slam City Skates. The cobbles and crowds make skating in Covent Garden impossible, but kids in sneakers carrying boards bearing four wheels have been beating a track here since the mid-Eighties.
Arran’s only slightly younger than the Neal’s Yard landmark, and reckons he first became a customer around the age of 14. Today however the Chelsea College of Art graduate, fine artist and graphic designer is as likely to be contributing his creative vision in the shop as he is to flip through their racks or pore over recently arrived gear. His first design project for Slam City, an iconic range of t-shirts depicting grizzly bears, pigeons and Big Ben, was followed this autumn by a collaboration with Emerica resulting in a limited-edition shoe featuring Arran’s art exclusive to the shop. Next year Arran’s series of eye-catching decks is set to hit the shelves for Slam’s silver jubilee.
There’s a route that shoppers have in their heads of London, there’s a tourist route, and then there’s skateboarders. Our route takes us to really random places and backstreets
These endeavours exemplify the phenomenon that sees visual arts playing a surprisingly prominent role within the skate community; as an activity certainly skating attracts far more than its fair share of fans from the creative industries. Just as golf is the pursuit of choice among doctors, skating draws scores of designers and artists. A store catering to skaters is likely to have original art on its walls, screens showing cutting-edge video and gear featuring a huge diversity of graphics on every surface. You just don’t get such a strong visual element in other sports or hobbies – can you imagine swimming or cricket being so infused with artistic endeavour?
It sounds cheesy, but it is a lifestyle. In that lifestyle there aren’t any rules like you get in most sports
Contrary to popular belief, it seems there’s a lot more to skate culture than baiting security guards and raising hell on walkways, and Arran’s perfectly placed to explain why exceptional graphic art and boundary-pushing video are integral to this urban activity propelled on polyurethane wheels. “Skateboarding’s not really perceived as a sport by those who practice it,” he begins. “It sounds cheesy, but it is a lifestyle. In that lifestyle there aren’t any rules like you get in most sports.”
Without the constructs of seasons, periods, leagues or matches, there’s none of the in-built hierarchy found in many traditional organised physical pursuits. “Skateboarding is all about freedom and self-expression in space. I think that’s what leads to skateboarders being creative; it’s all to do with vision.”
Opening your mind to view the world with child-like wonder is a skill practiced not just by skaters of course, but by artists too. “When you’re a kid you walk around a city and all you do is look for things to play on. The environment is your playground,” Arran reasons, pointing to the tendency of children to find fascination in stepping stones, to turn puddles into paddling pools or re-imagine railings as climbing frames. “Then society teaches you to grow up basically so you don’t do that anymore. But when you skate, you keep that vision and you stay in that kind of playful mindset, where everything in your environment is a means for self-expression and the skateboard’s the tool, like the artist’s paintbrush. That’s why skateboarders are very creative; it’s in their nature.”
The theme is one explored in Beautiful Losers, Aaron Rose’s documentary about the nexus of street art and skating that inspired last summer’s exhibition in Covent Garden’s Jubilee Market, DIY London Seen, which featured Arran’s sculpture “Mirrorball Bear”. Including the work of 20 artists, the show was covered by the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC News and the Evening Standard – proof that art fuelled by skating goes much further than graffiti splashed up a derelict pedestrian underpass.
In truth, skating is inherently visual. “It’s amazing how skateboard videos are always quite ahead of their time,” says Arran. “They’re always super-creative.” It’s not at all uncommon for techniques born in dark concrete corners of London find their way into mainstream cinema, documentary films and music videos.
When you’re a kid you walk around a city and all you do is look for things to play on. The environment is your playground. Then society teaches you to grow up basically so you don’t do that anymore.
Forward-thinking video edits provide a way to preserve and celebrate super-human movements that are over in an instant. “It’s a way of portraying the experience. When it happens in real life, it happens in a second,” he says. “If you were to call a skater an artist, which I would argue you could, then when people are doing a mad trick it’s creating a spectacle. When it’s actually happening the skateboarder doesn’t get to see the trick, just experience it.”
In the act of nailing tricks, a skater has to tap into his or her own innate inventiveness. Actively thinking about being creative doesn’t enter the equation. “When you’re skating you’re free,” Arran explains. “You can’t be thinking about design when you’re trying to broadside a handrail down a 10-stair because you’re just going to break your neck.”
The artist’s recent show at the Trafalgar Hotel has just come down and he’s hard at work preparing to mount his first solo exhibition at the Wayward Gallery, a space at the new epicentre of the London art scene off Vyner Street in East London. While he doesn’t think about issues of art and design when he’s skating, neither does he ponder the possibility of injury which could put a serious damper on his professional productivity. “I never think about that. It’s just not worth thinking about because then it’ll happen!” he laughs.
The absence of rules and the intrinsic spirit of liberty in skating means that the community is a notably supportive one. The fact that it attracts everyone from death metal fans to followers of hip hop to clean-cut, on-trend hipsters is evidence of “the freedom of the culture,” says Arran. “Everyone gets on with everyone because of skating. You go do Southbank, you shake everyone’s hand and you say hello to the kids. Everyone’s appreciative of each other; that’s just what skateboarding’s like.”
When Arran talks about Southbank, he’s speaking of that colourful concrete underworld beneath Queen Elizabeth Hall on the south side of the Thames that’s been used as an impromptu skate park since the Seventies. It’s the capital of skateboarding in Britain. “I used to come into London with all my little skate crew back in the day, just rock up on the train and then skate Southbank and Shell Centre – we didn’t know anywhere else. We used to get on the Tube to go to Slam City Skates and then one day someone was like, ‘You know it’s just across the river.’ We didn’t know London at all!”
Devoted colonies spring up around shops that offer goods and services to skaters, often fostering a spirit of collaboration. “Slam City Skates is the only skater-run shop in Covent Garden. It’s like the hub, the main home of the skate scene in the UK,” says Arran. In recent years, more amenities centred on skate lifestyle have made their home in the district too. And like Slam City, they’re keen to develop and promote the close ties between skating and art.
Open in Neal Street only since summer, WeSC – which stands for We Are the Superlative Conspiracy – places creativity high on the agenda. Plenty of brands sponsor skaters, but WeSC instead has WeActivists. There are about 70 of these informal ambassadors, selected for being extremely good at what they do. Some are world famous and some are totally unknown. In addition to skaters and showboarders, there are chefs, filmmakers, musicians, photographers, writers, directors and DJs. A few – Love Eneroth, Clint Peterson and Chris Pastras – are skateboarders and artists.
Around the corner, street fashion brand Fenchurch list the four pillars of its brand as art, fashion, skate and music. Recently they’ve really been pushing the creative envelope in the direction of sound. Their flagship in Earlham Street hosts frequent DJ sessions, while they regularly collaborate with musicians to create exclusive podcasts and mixes. There are currently over 30 such pieces of aural art available for download on their website, from Canadian duo Love & Electrik to Swedish dubstep crew All Out Dubstep to French DJ Toxic Avenger.
Volcom has been a fixture for skaters, surfers and snowboarders in Seven Dials for two years, but the labels existed since 1991. Almost since the start, Volcom has celebrated creativity by giving established and aspiring artists the chance to express themselves through their Featured Artist Series. They also run an in-house independent record label, Volcom Entertainment.
So much for the notion that all skaters are slackers then. I wonder, could this mix of imagination, art and music be no coincidence, but instead an inevitable by-product of skating itself? With a grin, Arran acknowledges, “Skateboarding isn’t what people normally think.”
Click here to see Arran’s blog
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Tags: Arran Gregory, Covent Garden, Fenchurch, Neal's Yard, Skateboarding, skater, Slam City, Slam City Skates, WeSC