Artist, biker, and musician Paul Simonon was the bass player for legendary punk band The Clash and the mastermind behind their visual style. His love of leathers, military gear and stenciled slogans gave the Clash a political edge: they weren't just a band–they were guerrillas. The photograph of Simonon smashing his bass into the stage on the cover of their 1979 album London Calling is one of the most potent in music history.

Since the band split in the mid-1980s, Simonon has focused on oil on canvas paintings inspired by 20th century realism and its documentation of the living conditions of the working classes, in particular the work of the American Ashcan School in turn of the century New York, and the ‘Kitchen Sink’ school of painters of 1950s post-War Britain. Each focused on the banal and ordinary while depicting the resultant misery, angst and, at times, violence. In Britain the fractious domestic and economic situation of post-war austerity gave rise to the emergence of the subcultures, such as punk. Simonon’s 2015 exhibition at ICA “Wot No Bike” is Simonon’s personal exploration of British subculture and counterculture in the post-war decades. Autobiographical in the modernist and realist painting tradition, his paintings depict his own personal effects that include biker paraphernalia such as jackets, boots, helmets and gloves, alongside his packets of cigarettes and books. The paintings are as much self-portraits as they are still lifes.

Simonon’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions in London at ICA and Thomas Williams Fine Art. His art also been included in group exhibitions at Edinburgh’s National Gallery of Modern Art, London Underground, and Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox in London.

Courtesy of ICA London