20 Questions With Jimmy Turrell
Jimmy Turrell is a London-based graphic artist and video director whose work sits at the intersection of collage, drawing, screenprinting and painting. Trained at Central Saint Martins, he blends handmade techniques with digital processes to create bold, layered pieces that pulse with the energy of the city. His influences span DJ Rashad to Erin O'Keefe, Fade To Mind Records to early Flipside Magazine - music culture and visual experimentation filtered through a distinctive graphic sensibility.
We asked him 20 questions...
1. What is your earliest memory?
Being turbo-launched around the Byker Wall in a pram, like my cousin was giving me an architectural tour before I could even focus my eyes.
2. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Trust it," even when every instinct says I shouldn't.
3. What is your greatest extravagance?
Buying obscure vinyl and huge hard drives to store decades of visual chaos.
4. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Turning football, noise and colour theory into something resembling a career.
5. If you could go back and speak to your teenage self, what would you say?
"Keep cutting things up - it's basically time travel."
6. What keeps you awake at night?
The creeping suspicion that a collage somewhere in the studio is quietly editing me back.
7. Which talent would you most like to have?
Being able to layer reality like Photoshop.
8. What has been your biggest waste of time?
Searching for the scissors that were in my hand all along.
9. Which celebrity do you most dislike?
Anyone who calls art "content" without visibly dying inside.
10. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A table full of paper scraps and a tune that rearranges your insides.
11. If you lost everything tomorrow, what would you miss most?
My archive - my unofficial second brain.
12. What smell takes you back to childhood?
Byker breeze mixed with chip-shop poetry.
13. What's the one artwork/photograph you wish you had created?
Anything that looks like a printer having a beautiful meltdown.
14. Which piece of your own work is either overrated or underrated?
The pieces I made fast enough to confuse myself - always underrated.
15. What subject matter are you afraid to explore in your work?
Pure, immaculate nothingness - terrifying stuff.
16. What do you see when you look at your earliest work?
A kid remixing the world with no permission slip.
17. What's the cruelest criticism your work has ever received?
"It would make a nice poster," said with the exact tone of someone delivering a verdict.
18. When do you feel like a fraud?
Whenever someone asks for a step-by-step explanation of something built entirely on instinct.
19. What subject have you photographed or painted too many times?
Faces cut from magazines, reborn into something else.
20. What do you hope people don't notice in your work?
That half my colour palettes come from old football programmes and corner-shop wrappers.