Jamie Hewlett has become renowned as an award-winning illustrator, artist and music video director, capable of dreaming up entire universes.
In 1988, aged just 20, he co-created the cult comic series Tank Girl with his friend Alan Martin. Tank Girl was a foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, hard-fighting, sexually dominant heroine. Someone who’d genuinely intimidate and frighten men, unlike the pornstar-in-a-cape style of other comic heroines at the time.
She became an icon wherever the comic was sold – inspiring protests against Margaret Thatcher, influencing designers like Vivienne Westwood and triggering the bad girl fashion craze of the early 1990s.
Tank Girl became a springboard for Jamie’s career, and a decade later, in 1998, he co-created the biggest virtual band in the world: Gorillaz.
Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn were born within 11 days of each other in 1968, under the Chinese zodiac of the monkey. 30 years later, they lived together in a flat above a carpet shop in west London during personal upheaval. Both had ended long-term relationships and wanted to do something new with their lives.
Damon had bought a plasma screen television on which they spent hours watching MTV, staring perplexed into the burning bush of pop culture. Everything seemed so phoney, commodified and manufactured, but not skillfully manufactured.
