Supreme officially announced this week’s latest joint project, which is a collaboration series with Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey. British artist Mark Leckey, born in 1964, grew up in a working-class family in the suburbs of Liverpool. Leckey left school at the age of 15 and later studied at an art college in New Castle before moving to London in 1997. As a teenager, he began hanging out with members of “Casuals,” a subculture from the United Kingdom that evolved from football hooligans who replaced their team uniforms with fashionable brands to avoid detection by the police. For Leckey, “Casuals are a way to use style to change yourself.”
On an artistic level, Leckey’s early understanding of the power of images and shared experiences deeply influenced his artistic practice. He specializes in blending video, sculpture, sound, installation and performance to explore British culture through a unique emotional framework. His artwork examines the relationship between youth, class, public space, popular media and technology, while considering the individual and collective impact on nostalgia and memory.
In 1999, Leckey released his first short video, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore – a conceptual film documenting the British dance movement of the 1970s to 1990s. The film compiles clips from disco, rave parties and the burgeoning northern soul scene, but is brought together by an abstract, almost melancholy soundtrack. Leckey believes the work’s title signifies that “something as banal, dispensable, and exploitative as a jeans manufacturer can be taken advantage of by a group of people and made into something totemic, powerful, and vital.”
In this joint series, Supreme draws inspiration from Mark Leckey’s past works “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore”, “Dream English Kid”, “1964–1999 AD” and “GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction”, combining relevant slogans and images taken from the film. Prints infuse workwear, shirts, pants, T-shirts and skateboard decking. It is reported that the series will be first launched on September 14th through Supreme North America and Europe, and will be launched in Supreme Japan and South Korea stores on September 16th.
