Creating visions of an 'awesome future'

Chaz: In our visual language, you can identify two styles that merged to become The London Police’s visual language. First, there were my characters that live in this fantasy world that Bob enriched with his architectural elements. Our style could be described as a fusion of futuristic and fantasy worlds. Through our long-term friendship, two artistic directions merged during TLP’s collaborative to create a unique signature.

Bob: There you go! There are two styles: there are my architectural compositions and there are Chaz’s character-based components. I would say that Chaz’s imagery is based on early graffiti characters, pop art, skateboard art. My creative expressions are based typically on architecture and vintage architectural illustration.

Chaz: As the work has moved along, Bob has developed his own subjects and created quite a few characters. Sometimes I focus more on the background using old school graffiti writing or paint backgrounds in particular colours that I would describe as pastel colours that allow the black and white illustrations to stand out nicely. In general, we try to make positive images that make us happy and, hopefully, make the people looking at the pieces happy too.

Chaz: Well, it is all about the two sides or two styles coming together. My characters and Bob’s architecture around it. My characters are genuinely most of the lads. And they are coming out of my imagination. When they are on their own, they are visually interesting characters. But when Bob comes along, he begins to build worlds for them to live in and give it a depth. Furthermore, his visual imagery helps tell the stories of what the lad does or what the future landscape looks like. Maybe Bob wants to add a little…

Bob: Exactly. I think the two styles or worlds merging to create that unique story of the characters in the futuristic illustrated world.

Chaz: The collaborative aspect is a crucial part of our work. It is what keeps us together as a partnership. That we work in tandem with each other is a central point.

Bob: I think either one is good on their own, but I think together you get that special and interesting look. Although the styles are so different on their own, together, they form unique results.

Chaz: The paintings are almost still shots or still-life paintings of what would otherwise be an animation, some sort of moving scenes. I guess it would be interesting to expand the collaboration further and share our imagery and ideas with animation artists to bring our worlds to life one day.

Chaz: Well, I would disagree and say they‘re not all happy or content. They all look like they have a smiley face, but perhaps it’s a wry smile. In addition, I think that the characters portrayed sometimes mirror ourselves. Bob’s characters are sometimes just robotically getting on with life, which I believe mirrors him. Just as the happy ones mirror me, and that’s not a joke. There is more to the characters on a closer look.

Bob: I like to think that there are always both moods or characters contained in our works. You have the sort of the good and the dark side in it. Not everything can only be happy. There is more to a story than just happiness. There are challenges, victories, depressing moments, and they are all part of life. The contrasts do work; I think you need the opposites! Also, as a side note: we foremost use black and white shading in our creations – so there again, you have the opposites.

In December 2020, PAT Art Lab was lucky enough to create a mural with The London Police. The mural was realised at the PATRIZIA office branch in Luxembourg. It is located in the core of the first floor where visitors are received, and all internal meetings and presentations take place. The intention is to surround employees and visitors with creativity, which promotes new ideas and positivity in their daily work!

Chaz: I think, as a long-term partnership, we are a well-coordinated team, have assumed our roles and know what each one of us is good at. During our creative process, there are things that we know by heart and happen intuitively, sort of automatically. But we always try to keep a certain flexibility with every work we create. One of the key elements is never to be too sure of what you are doing but always have a rough idea. It is a mixture of knowing what we will do and being flexible enough to allow change during the process.

Chaz: First, we base the quantities for the material on the size of the piece. Then we decided on a draft that would allow the best outcome for the space in the requested time frame of the realisation. Of course, we went through our catalogue of characters and architectural compositions.

Still, we always want to find a unique way to tell the story of the partners we collaborate with. Together with Pat Art Lab, we chose the colours according to the space and furniture and thought of a way to incorporate the values of PATRIZIA. Also, we designed a rough idea on how to split the workload. We then mixed our sketch, timeframe and our experience together and came up with an execution plan.

Bob: I think when I saw the brief, I thought the best way to show the company’s vision and values in a mural would be to have people celebrating with waving flags, waving their arms in the air like a high five and other positive gestures. And I think the best way to do that is through flags and different scenes of cooperation and success. We also stated them on architecture.

What is also essential, particularly with this mural style, is that you want to have a rough idea of what you will do. On the other hand, you don’t make all the decisions in the sketch to leave room for flexibility. Sometimes we meet people throughout the time of the execution of the mural, and we end up adding their names to the piece. Or we get to see something particular about Luxembourg or the company that we want to add in. That happens a lot of the time.

Bob: Tough question, but we can sort of give a direction where it could lead for us. So far, we have been working in the traditional art field, which means using pens, paint and an easel. Right now, we are experimenting with digital art and with animating our artistic elements. I think this would be the direction in which we want to reinvent ourselves and push our art forward. Reinvention would be using different tools and automating some of the work we have been doing by hand, but it also means incorporating experts from other fields.

Chaz: There is much furore over NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in the art world right now, and we are about to get a little bit involved in it. It seems like crypto art and NFTs could become a thing of the future. But also, the artistic use of lights, lasers, 3D, augmented and virtual reality means many more fields of exploration and an increase in the use of technology and digitalisation.

Chaz: If we can make an image that we feel is positive and entertaining, then we are making a small impact of positivity and happiness in the future when someone looks at it. Also, the world needs a place for enjoyment and entertainment – we don’t want a world that is just bland, grey and featureless. So, the mission here would be to not just have grey walls for functional reasons, but to make them exciting, appealing and even bring a message along.

Bob: I can draw a parallel to music. Every time I hear Barry Manilow on the radio, it makes your day better. It has a significant impact on people’s lives. I don’t know if our art has the same impact but that is the intention: to bright-en up the world. It should be visually appealing, and we hope that the creativity and positivity transmit to the people who discover our artworks.