The Kid whose art grew up in public goes solo

He started out as a graffiti artist, but now Kid Acne tells Sarah Freeman why he’s drawing a line under the past.

To describe Kid Acne simply as a graffiti artist doesn’t come close to doing his career justice.

Following an appearance on Rolf’s Cartoon Club at the age of 12, he took his art to the streets, and in the intervening 20 years, the Sheffield-based artist has had a go at most things.

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There’s the comic books, the record sleeves, the flyers and the fanzines and when you add in the commercial commissions, large scale sculptures, paintings, music and a short films, it makes for an eclectic mix.

However, with his first solo exhibition about to open at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery, Kid Acne is hoping to use the show as a line in the sand, it’s why he’s called it Kill Your Darlings.

“It’s the motto writers use to describe the painful process of cutting cherished characters or scenes which don’t serve their overall story,” he says by way of explanation.

“For me this exhibition is in many ways the end of one chapter.

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“It’s about showing the early work and where I started out and it’s about showing how I developed along the way, but once it’s done I want to move on, I don’t want to have to keep referring to the past.”

Thanks to Banksy, the profile of urban art has never been higher. His iconic street art stencils first began to appear at the turn of the millennium and immediately raised the bar of graffiti art.

Since then campaigns have been launched to preserve his work on street corners and he’s acquired a celebrity following. However, in his wake have followed a lot of inferior copy cats, with little of Banksy’s wit or talent.

“When an art form is brought into the mainstream, the content inevitably becomes diluted for a while,” says Kid Acne. “After the Arctic Monkeys you suddenly had a whole lot of bands trying to emulate their sound. They weren’t as good of course and eventually they faded into the background while the Monkeys have remained.

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“What Banksy has done is taken really good street art to a position where people can no longer say it’s just vandalism.”

Born in Malawi, Kid Acne grew up in Leicestershire before moving to Sheffield and it was there that he first started experimenting with art.

“When I was starting out a lot of American hip-hop artists were calling themselves Kid something or other,” he says. “Part of me wanted to be like them, but I also had that British sense of self-deprecation. I was a spotty teenager, so Kid Acne seemed to satisfy both things.

“When I was a teenager me and a group of friends began making underground fanzines and we even had our own music imprint called Invisible Spies. It was all about a group of friends getting together and just doing things they enjoyed.”

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Kid Acne’s street art soon became a familiar sight to those who regularly walked down London Road and Nether Edge as teenagers and, at 32, he sees the city very much as home.

Since those early days Kid Acne has now established himself as an illustrator and graphic artist. He has designed T-shirts, put his mark on a range of skateboards and produced his own spray cans.

His work has also been widely exhibited in the UK, Europe and America, but with Kill Your Darlings, his first-ever solo show, it will be a chance for visitors to see the sheer breadth of his work.

“For me it’s been good to look back and have some recognition from where I have got to.

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“A lot of art exhibitions just feature one medium, but here there will be sketch books, screen prints, skateboard graphics and some of the vinyl toys I have designed.

“I may have changed a lot over the years, but how I produce work has remained the same. I don’t like things to be over complicated and I hope what I do still retains the DIY quality that it had when I started out.”

The exhibition will also debut a series of new work from Kid Acne, from large-scale sculptures to paintings and a live action short film.

“It feels great,” he says.

“You should never underestimate your audience, because although I’ve done music and paintings, I’ve not always paid attention to who is interested in what I do.

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“The fact that you are on the radar of somewhere like Millennium Gallery is great, and it’s great that they’ve asked me to have an exhibition in such a prestigious place.”

Kid Acne: Kill Your Darlings, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, July 21 to October 23. 0114 278 2600, www.museums-sheffield.org.uk

Comic book hero leads workshop

Ahead of the opening of Kill Your Darlings, graphic illustrator Jim Connolly is hosting a workshop in comic book-style illustration.

Best know for his visions of Tinsley Towers, Meadowhall and Hendersons Relish around Sheffield, Jim, who also drew Iron Maiden’s mascot “Eddie” for the band’s Final Frontier album, will be helping those who attend the event to create an apocalyptic vision of the city.

The workshop will take place at the Millennium Gallery this Sunday and to book a place call 0114 278 2655. For examples of Jim’s work visit www.jimcportfolio.co.uk