I Can’t Hear You, It’s Picture Day II

Description

Created for the monochrome Gucci campaign at the end of 2022.
Featured in the Gucci & Hypebeast Hero Campaign.
Original inspiration ‘I Can’t Hear You, It’s Picture Day’, (2020).

The work evokes traces of American artist Kerry James Marshall combined with measured reflections on childhood and projections of the self.

‘When I was in secondary school, If I wasn’t hanging out with my bredrin’s or going to chicken shops after school, then I was on my way to my trumpet lessons (something I really hated at the time). I played trumpet for about 7 years, starting in year 4 and finishing in year 11.
I left the brass life behind at a grade 4 level with a certificate from the Royal academy of music (which I can’t find lol).
Mum thought it would be a good skill to learn, and also claimed it would help me with the girls. She said it was a “ sexy instrument”, but it was actually her method of pre-occupying my time so that I wouldn’t be in the streets loitering till late and I could also gain some cool skills in the process.
My trumpet teacher, Mr Billam, was an ex-military man and he would constantly get mad because I would NEVER practice (but I was still decent lol). Often time, he would shout at me saying I needed to “play like this, play like that”. I would tune him out, but the base in his voice always disturbed my day-dreams. After a while it just sounded like a broken record in the back of my head, but I never forgot his voice: ‘play B flat Shaquille’, he would say.
My maths teacher was the same, it was the only subject I kept failing.
All I would do in class was drawing, often images of anime or of myself in different caricature styles (2 of which I referenced for this painting), getting letters sent home saying that I wouldn’t study, just draw. Me and the Math teacher wouldn’t get along, and I began to dislike school, loving its social life.
Day after day, year after year, this would go on, all for it to be wrapped up in a pretty package at the end of the year on picture day, with photos that say ‘I’m happy to be here’ when it was quite the opposite.
I can still remember the photographer saying ‘Say cheese’ to the students. Man, school was a drag, but what I wouldn’t give, just to do it all again.”