Last night’s launch of PWBC: A Retrospective exhibition was “ferocious”, according to James Edson, who put on the show with Daniel “Snowy” Kinloch to celebrate Lucien Clarke’s first sneaker with skate brand SUPRA. The skater’s mom and his brother were in the house, plus the Palace Wayward Boys Choir (PWBC) and hordes of their friends and fans turned up to support.
The show is a mixture of archive shots of the crew (“filmmakers, musicians, DJs, writers, graffiti writers, gallerists, artists, piss-artists and troublemakers”), plus some new documentary shots of Lucien Clarke skating and chilling in his new black Quattro Signature Colorway for SUPRA. There’s also a stack of old TVs showing 45 minutes of rolling footage of the skate crew, created by Palace’s Lev Tanju. The exhibition is only open October 9-10 at the 71a Gallery in Shoreditch, so get down while it’s still going down. We caught up with Edson, Snowy and Lucien before the party.
So is this all your work, Edson and Snowy?
E: Everything’s ours, except for a wall of photos from disposable cameras that we gave out to everybody.
You’re two the main chroniclers.
S: There are a couple more, a couple that it would have been nice to have some of their stuff. Like Tom Richardson, or “Rumcoke.” He’s been prolific. He really has some amazing stuff – the best portraits of us.
E: He’s got about 1000 Polaroids documenting the South Bank. Nobody’s got that.
Are these unseen photos?
E: Yeah. The only people who would have seen mine would be people like Lev. Not the public.
I like that they’re not too highly produced like some more modern skateboarding photos or films.
E: We’ve taken it back to being not too sophisticated or over-produced. It got to the point when everything was so HD. It was weird. It wasn’t skateboarding.
S: It got to the point almost like it was looking down from some perch. That’s not where fucking skateboarding comes from!
E: Lev brought it back to this DIY thing and VHS and raw editing. He learned everything without going to art school. He fumbled his way through and created this look, which now obviously loads of people are using in fucking everything – music videos, ads. I remember him learning it and trying to get VHS onto his computer so he could edit it. He was playing it off the TV and then filming it with a digital camera and it created this aesthetic. Like VHS, but with this crisp HD feel. Nobody had ever done that yet. After that people realized you could just do it in your bedroom.
Where are the best spots for skating in London?
S: Just the streets.
E: Maybe Hackney Wick skate park. It’s got this whole ’90s, wooden thing. It’s sloppy as fuck. There’s a good crew there and really weird old ramps. Everything’s janky. It’s fun.
S: It’s like then retirement home though, isn’t it really?
E: I’m retired! I’m 38 years old!
And what about your new Supra sneakers, Lucien?
L: They’re got reflectors, so they look great if you take photographs, or if you’re filming shit at night. It just looks good in general. I’ve got my little signature in here and the tattoo that I have of PWBC. It was my first tattoo. My mom was like, “Oh my god!”
The Supra guys were once your heroes, but now you’re in the crew too.
L: Yeah they’re proper legends: Tom Penny, Muska, John Greco, Erik Ellington. Now I’m the young’un.
Launches in-store at Slam pre-release 10th October and select skate shops and surpafootwear.com from October 12.
PWBC: A Retrospective is open October 9 and 10 at 71alondon.com