My culture picks: Jamie Hewlett

25 January 2018

Jamie Hewlett is best known as the artist behind the cult comic Tank Girl and the virtual band Gorillaz, and his distinctive cartoonish art style is immediately recognisable. He shares his current favourite exhibition, film and television show with Front Row.

Basquiat: Boom For Real is the UK's first large-scale exhibition of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Jamie says: "I don’t go to enough exhibitions, purely because it intimidates me. When I'm working on something, if I went to an exhibition of an artist I respect, then I usually come home quite depressed and look at what I’m doing and throw it all away and start again.

"However, I love Basquiat. I saw his work in Paris five years ago, that was a great exhibition - but I love the Barbican because it’s quite informative. If you are a young student wanting to find out the history of Basquiat, it’s all there for you."

Basquiat: Boom For Real runs until Sunday 28 January 2018 at the Barbican in London; read more about the exhibition here. Photo: © Edo Bertoglio, courtesy of Maripol. Artwork: © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

Willem Dafoe has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor in this year's Oscars and Baftas for his role in 2017's The Florida Project.

Jamie says: "I really like this director Sean Baker, I think what he’s doing is really original, and new. His last movie was called Tangerine; this is his new film, starring Willem Dafoe, and set in the sort of lower housing hotels just outside Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

"It’s about little kids getting up to mischief and low-income families struggling to survive while the craziness of Walt Disney World goes on around them. It’s a wonderful film."

The Florida Project is expected to be available on streaming platforms from the end of January 2018, with a DVD and Blu-Ray release scheduled for March. Image courtesy of A24.

Quarry stars Peter Mullan as a mysterious crime boss tempting Logan Marshall-Green's ex-soldier into life as a hitman.

Jamie says: "This series really blew my mind… it’s set in Memphis in 1973, it’s these two Vietnam vets come back from the war and they’ve been involved in something unpleasant while they’ve been out in Vietnam, and they can’t get work in their hometown, nobody wants to know them, nobody wants to speak to them, and they get approached by this guy who offers them jobs as hitmen.

"It’s beautifully written, beautifully acted, the entire soundtrack is all Otis Reading songs, and it really looks like it was shot in 1973."