Monkey business: Inside the mind of Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett

It’s not often that an artist gets the chance to showcase his work in both the pages of a comic book and in front of stadiums of people, but Jamie Hewlett certainly has.

It all started in 1988 when he and writer Alan Martin created the Tank Girl comic strip, a sci-fi series with punk rock flavour that became popular with the indie counterculture of the 90s.

Jamie Hewlett (Taschen) is the artist's first major monograph.

Ten years after Hewlett’s initial success he struck gold once again when together with his then flatmate, Blur frontman Damon Albarn, they created the virtual band Gorillaz – an animated music group whose fictional universe was explored in their surreal music videos. Gorillaz would eventually perform arena tours on video screens and sometimes in hologram form.

Under the banner of Gorillaz Hewlett and Albarn won a Grammy in 2006, although it hasn’t all been smooth sailing – there was a three year period when the duo didn’t speak to each other. They have since overcome this and last year Gorillaz released their fourth album Humanz.

Another Albarn collaboration saw Hewlett create artwork for the Chinese contemporary opera Monkey: Journey to the West. His characters were then featured in the BBC’s 2008 Olympic Games animation.

In 2015 Hewlett’s work made it onto the walls of London’s Saatchi Gallery for The Suggestionists exhibition – an eclectic mix of paintings for tarot cards, film posters for fake 1970s exploitation movies, and images of pine trees.

Now with all this creative endeavour under his belt Taschen have released Hewlett’s first major monograph of his work with over 400 artworks, spanning his 25 year career. Here are nine of our favourite images.