with Claire Barrow
What was the original concept behind your Xtreme Sports collection and what interested you to continue it in multiple installments?
Claire Barrow – The Sports title is a way to express my ideas in a wearable way that also pokes fun at the current streetwear trend that high fashion brands try to emulate. Some of the items aren't really ‘sportswear’ in any sense, like the silk scarves and the glow-in-the-dark alien fetus ring from this collection for example. But then I also have t-shirts and hoodies in each collection which could be called streetwear. I’ve made four installments over the last three years now and have really enjoyed it, it feels more lighthearted.
How does your preparation for a collection differ from your preparation for a painting?
CB – Really different sometimes and other times not, it’s really dependent on the project. Like, if i’m doing a collection or painting I like to think about the bigger ‘picture’ first then design the items within it to fit with certain themes or statements I want to make.
But then sometimes a drawing I might have just done quickly while watching a film one evening gets me inspired to create something around it. I just have to let my left hand and right brain guide me and be totally free; unless I'm really focusing on making something super detailed in which case I'll sketch it out a few times then transfer it onto canvas.
When working on a painting for ten months how do you not lose focus?
CB – I loved working for Bladee and wanted to do his new album justice with something quite grand in scale, so it was actually just really fun and easy to want to work on it regularly... but not every single day for ten months that would be mad! To focus on work I like setting alarms on a pocket stopwatch. And I put on the same old Levis dungarees every day that I paint in as a uniform, so they help me feel focused.
If someone were to look at your recently watched on YouTube what would they find?
CB – They would hate it [laughs]. Every recommended video that pops up has to do with Ru Paul’s Drag Race commentary or Playstation games walkthroughs so that’s the shit I watch or a State of Trance radio show which I listen to each week without fail. Recently got more into audiobooks and podcasts rather than just youtube’ing all day long.
What were some of the first emo and punk records you discovered, and how did your taste evolve as you transitioned between the two genres?
CB – I like Alexisonfire, Funeral for a Friend, and AFI. They were my favorite. The earlier AFI albums are really good, I think. I was a big Black Flag, Descendents, and Minor Threat fan. They almost converted me to straightedge, but it didn't quite stick.
Today is national straightedge day.
CB – Oh cool, I'll put tiny X's on my hands [laughs]. When I finally discovered punk I felt embarrassed I was so late to the party and I made it my mission to watch every documentary about Punk, researched it tons and even wrote an essay on ‘Post Hardcore’ in my second year of college. I was excited and obsessed. In my early 20’s I really got into 60s music, which I now look back on as a weird time and am no longer into much anymore but I was just curious to discover anything and everything, I'm not afraid of having bad taste.
I also really like a lot of new artists who I’m always checking out on SoundCloud but at the moment what I've kinda gone back to is liking the stuff I was into as a kid. Looking back at the choices I've made throughout my life, I had it right all along!
It can feel almost embarrassing, but realizing that your current taste has been with you all along is perfectly okay. Growing up, you explore different genres and the subcultures that come with them. Looking back, you might cringe at some of it, but it’s not that bad—and even if it is, it’s still okay to enjoy it. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.
CB – I don't think non-MySpacers understand that it was kinda not so serious for the people who were really into it as well. It was just like the birth of music downloading online and you didn't have to rip CDs anymore so kids all over the world were getting into emo which led to discovering metal and punk and then creating bands. A lot of the people were from small towns and the only way to access music was through MySpace, it created this whole thing.
I discovered that recently, the whole back catalog of music on MySpace was deleted by accident because of a server error lol. So emo will end up like the biggest subculture time forgot. It's not as heavily documented, the DIY music has been lost, the emo fringe pics were deleted by their owners and wiped from the net.
CB – I don't think non-MySpacers understand that it was kinda not so serious for the people who were really into it as well. It was just like the birth of music downloading online and you didn't have to rip CDs anymore so kids all over the world were getting into emo which led to discovering metal and punk and then creating bands. A lot of the people were from small towns and the only way to access music was through MySpace, it created this whole thing.
I discovered that recently, the whole back catalog of music on MySpace was deleted by accident because of a server error lol. So emo will end up like the biggest subculture time forgot. It's not as heavily documented, the DIY music has been lost, the emo fringe pics were deleted by their owners and wiped from the net.
How was your show in Cornwall?
CB – It was dreamy. Do you know Cornwall? It’s right down the bottom of the UK’s West Coast. The residency was based in Zennor, and then St. Ives, which is like ancient rocks, coastlines, beaches and fields unspoiled since the bronze age. It's just magical and otherworldly. Where I was staying was next to Aleister Crowley's old cottage where he apparently opened a portal to hell with one of his spells and some aliens came out of it. It's on a ley line so it makes sense! They've been seen around the area by locals.
This was completely in the middle of nowhere. There were no shops nearby. To get to St. Ives from Zennor I walked for an hour and forty minutes, and I don’t drive so I was doing regular countryside walks along these beautiful fields looking out to sea trying to avoid the cows and bulls. There are lots of cows everywhere so you'd have to walk through trying to intimidate them with your arms stretched out to make yourself as wide as possible.
I was in Zennor for two weeks then I moved, by car, into another space in the town of St. Ives, a few doors down from where Virginia Woolf wrote her novel To the Lighthouse and close to Barbara Hepworth's sculpture garden. I was completely alone, apart from check-ins from Rosie Osbourne and her family who run the residency alongside painter Danny Fox.
I created a large work on canvas which was a semi-auto biographical piece entitled ‘The Birth of Another Individual’. I was painting in a barn in Zennor, which was a fitting coincidence since the painting i’d been planning for a few years in my head takes place within a barn. My parents had me baptized in a church ceremony in a barn, surrounded by pigs, sheep and people. Since it was an autobiographical piece the real animals were converted into Ty Beanie Babies animals, more fitting, and other things summarising the last thirty years of my life.
CB – It was dreamy. Do you know Cornwall? It’s right down the bottom of the UK’s West Coast. The residency was based in Zennor, and then St. Ives, which is like ancient rocks, coastlines, beaches and fields unspoiled since the bronze age. It's just magical and otherworldly. Where I was staying was next to Aleister Crowley's old cottage where he apparently opened a portal to hell with one of his spells and some aliens came out of it. It's on a ley line so it makes sense! They've been seen around the area by locals.
This was completely in the middle of nowhere. There were no shops nearby. To get to St. Ives from Zennor I walked for an hour and forty minutes, and I don’t drive so I was doing regular countryside walks along these beautiful fields looking out to sea trying to avoid the cows and bulls. There are lots of cows everywhere so you'd have to walk through trying to intimidate them with your arms stretched out to make yourself as wide as possible.
I was in Zennor for two weeks then I moved, by car, into another space in the town of St. Ives, a few doors down from where Virginia Woolf wrote her novel To the Lighthouse and close to Barbara Hepworth's sculpture garden. I was completely alone, apart from check-ins from Rosie Osbourne and her family who run the residency alongside painter Danny Fox.
I created a large work on canvas which was a semi-auto biographical piece entitled ‘The Birth of Another Individual’. I was painting in a barn in Zennor, which was a fitting coincidence since the painting i’d been planning for a few years in my head takes place within a barn. My parents had me baptized in a church ceremony in a barn, surrounded by pigs, sheep and people. Since it was an autobiographical piece the real animals were converted into Ty Beanie Babies animals, more fitting, and other things summarising the last thirty years of my life.
The showing of it a few days ago back within the barn space was really fun, my boyfriend travelled over for it, I dressed up as a halloween skeleton and we had lots of local people come through.
How was it being so far removed from everything during that time?
CB – I love being alone, I still had my phone though, I wasn't able to turn that off. In St. Ives there were bars and galleries and they have the Tate which was all open also, with social distancing in place, because there's some weird covid tier system the government has in place at the moment where Cornwall was really relaxed. It’s a refreshing change from London which has a really strict lockdown.
They had this amazing old beachfront arcade with a sick game called Dark Escape 4D where you shoot at these creatures that have sexy women's bodies but spider legs. They are made in these fucked test lab things with all the spider ladies fetuses in jars that you have to shoot before they wake up and tear you up. And you have 3D glasses on and there’s air blowing at you and the seat vibrates so it is like it's really happening.
I struggle to fully escape into the beautiful violence of nature and its unpredictability. I'm too much of a child of the internet era and technology that I can never fully relax without some kind of artificial stimulant around me in some form. Hence the beanie babies on the canvas instead of real animals.
Interview Zane Olson
Photography Claire Barrow
Excerpt from Issue No. 2 (2021).