Issue 87 / April 2018

DIE
WITH
YOUR
MASK
ON
Masked comic-style designer
and Queens Of The Stone
Age collaborator, BONEFACE,
comes out from the shadows
for a debut solo exhibition at
Buyers Club in April.
Lurking in the shadows in some half-forgotten Liverpool
wasteland is a mastermind of the warped and twisted,
plucked from some dark corner of the internet’s seedy
underworld by the world’s biggest sleaze ‘n’ roll band.
BONEFACE comes from another dimension, a world where
everyone wears some kind of mask and no-one dares ask what
lies beneath.
Described as ‘slimed pop art’, boneface’s work is a dystopian
world of comic book oddities, a horrifying collision of Marvel
superheroes and 50s Hammer Horror, all contorted bodies,
angular shapes and devil-on-your-shoulder weirdness. Featuring
superheroes and villains, leather-clad ghouls and skulls galore,
boneface combines dark imagery with badass characters. It’s a
perfect fit for the switchblade swagger of Queens Of The Stone
Age, with whom boneface has struck up a close friendship.
Developing a world of cover, video and poster artwork for
QOTSA’s two most recent LPs – as well as the gatefold artwork
for the Mad Max: Fury Road OST – has allowed boneface to delve
deep inside his collection of weird and wonderful characters to
bring to life a supreme visual realisation of the world hinted at by
the music.
Boneface’s highly collectable work has not only been shown
in galleries across the world, but stretches to character cards and
posters that give more depth to the vaguely sinister ways of the
universe that his characters inhabit. In April, he is coming out
from his secret lair to showcase his works on the walls of Buyers
Club, in his first solo exhibition. Boneface’s campaign to conquer
the entire world is slowly coming together – we caught up with
him before he disappeared down the rabbit hole once more.
There’s a recurring theme in your work of characters who wear
masks. Why do you think you’re drawn to masked characters?
Growing up reading comics, watching horror movies and loving
Halloween, I’ve always enjoyed masks and people hiding their
identity. In a world where everyone posts everything about
themselves all over the internet every single day, I think wearing a
mask and staying anonymous is my countermeasure.
Masks inherently add a layer of mystique to a person: ‘Why are
they wearing a mask? What does it represent?’ I always like to hide
hidden meaning in things in my drawings, usually small details,
that may or may not convey something – I also like to fuck with
people, so a lot of the time symbols I use mean nothing at all. I
sometimes use masks in this way. Also, faces are hard to draw.
“Without drawing
I’d probably be
some flavour
of menace to
society”
How much do you think your own ability to hide behind a mask
of anonymity allows you to lose yourself in your creations? Do
you think you can reach deeper levels of creativity by keeping
your artistic self away from the person behind the mask?
I wear a mask because, fuck who I am, that’s not important.
I always wanted to be a superhero – or villain – since I was a
kid, so it just came natural to me when I started doing this to
adopt a pseudonym and don a mask. A lot of my work is creating
characters and world-building; usually there’s a bit of a backstory
to everything I draw, so I guess the ‘boneface’ persona kind of fits
into that world and helps in the sense that I can immerse myself
amongst the monsters and freaks that inhabit it. Obviously, I
don’t wear the thing while I’m working... not always.
What’s the theme of your exhibition coming up at Buyers
Club?
As it’s my first solo exhibition, there isn’t really a theme per se,
beyond whatever recurrent themes appear in my work. It’s more
of a retrospective of what I’ve done so far in my ‘career’. I’ve
chosen some of my favourite pieces from the projects I’ve done
over the past few years to display the original linework, and got
some huge, in-your-face, A0 prints of some other pieces.
If you could get anyone else to illustrate a skull mask for you,
living or dead, who would you pick?
John Wayne Gacy. He wasn’t the greatest painter, but I know it’d
be creepy as fuck.
Could you just draw what anyone sounds like from listening
to their music? Or do you need to be embedded in their
background and motivations like you are with Queens Of The
Stone Age?
I think the reason my stuff compliments QOTSA’s music so well is
basically because we have a thorough understanding of each other.
I was never a massive QOTSA fan, but I knew the hits – No One
Knows, Go With The Flow, Make It Wit Chu – whatever I’d seen on
Kerrang! when I was a teenager; but even then I totally got what
they were doing. Our collaboration started when Josh [Homme] saw
an interview I did with Juxtapoz magazine, where I basically said
I hated everyone, and explained my dystopian view on the world
and everyone in it. He gets that and immediately got in touch and
asked me to work with them. Our relationship now is very much
like Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman; it’s a very specific
formula that seems to work pretty well.
How far can your collaboration with QOTSA go? Is there a full
comic series in it with the characters you’ve created?
People ask me about this a lot. The characters I created for the short
film we did for ...Like Clockwork seem to resonate with people and
they always ask me when the feature length film or comic expanding
on that universe is gonna happen. I think I’d much rather leave it
where it is though. That 15-minute animation is its own contained
story, you don’t need to know anything else about those characters.
Like I mentioned before, they do all have names and backstories that
I came up with while QOTSA and I came up with the concept for the
film, but I don’t care to delve back into that world, at least not yet.
Also, because animating is a lot of work – even though Liam Brazier
did most of the heavy lifting, making everything move – and I’ve
always been far too lazy to draw a whole comic book.
Why is art and illustration important to you?
Drawing is my outlet, the way I express myself. Without it I’d
probably be some flavour of menace to society. !
Words: Frankie Muslin
Artwork: Boneface
boneface.co.uk
Boneface’s Die With Your Mask On exhibition at Buyers Club runs
throughout April, with a launch event on Wednesday 28th March
featuring Bido Lito! DJs.
26