HEAVYWEIGHTS 01 —Suffoca
Suffoca
Lewis Boyce is a Multidisciplinary Creative from London, specialising in Photography, Illustration, Filmmaking. I first discovered Boyce and his work at the 3rd year anniversary of Johnny Cupcakes’ late London store in Carnaby Street when Boyce was filming. I tracked down his instagram and was blown away by the diversity of his work and the stories he we was telling with his characters “Bean & Carny” — featuring them in videos and on the clothing he was designing at the time. I credit Boyce as the Creative who showed me that I didn’t have to stick to just one discipline, that I could try my hand at being a Polymath and still be successful.
— Below is a condensed version of a conversation I had with Boyce in April 2017 at a visit to the Tate Modern in London.
Can you introduce yourself, who are you? What do you do?
My name is Boyce, also known as “Suffoca” online. I class myself as an Artist because I like to cover so many different to approaches to telling a story. I have my hand in a lot of things. I can't help it, I just have to put out my opinion or view, not in a nasty way. I do a bit of everything.
Do you have a daily routine?
Sort of, I guess my daily routine at the moment, because it's all over the place, it depends on what job you're working on, deadlines and where you are, would be; get up, love cereal so I'm always having cereal & coffee, and then it's new but I kinda want to cut off from the internet till about 12 o'clock. I like to read, and then work on any sort of project for maybe an hour, then meditate for 20 minutes & appreciate things. Then I might go to the gym or crack on with the rest of the day.
What's the most important thing in your home workspace? What settles you in?
I have a really cool incense holder, handmade by this little Japanese guy when I was in Tokyo. He only made one, selling it for something like a tenner' and I thought it was amazing, so that's something, I don't always do an incense every morning but it's quite a humbling thing when I see it.
BOYCE — April 2017
BOYCE — April 2017
What do you think your wardrobe says about you? Would you say it's affected by the work you make?
Definitely, especially with the documentaries on designers I've done. One of them being Chris Stamp, or Ronnie Fieg. I feel like before I was filming with them I probably wasn't that conscious about what I was wearing. I was interested in it but wasn't conscious of myself reflecting it. I guess my wardrobe would say I'm a little bit OCD, it's colour co-ordinated, mostly white & black, and I always want to cut it down when I'm travelling somewhere. I would want it to be minimal.
Do you think there are any overlaps between your life and work aesthetics?
Yeah massively, majority of the people that I call my best mates are through work. I'm not a work, work person, I'm still very socially minded. When I approach people, I like to think I'm a humble person, I'm not going to be “I can do this for you”, or “I can make this better”. I'm more like “this is my vision, I think it would definitely be good”. People tell me to be more punchy' but you need to be yourself.
Is your own multidisciplinism important to you?
I'm quite opinionated, especially in the design realm and just interested in it, and someone who will look at something first before read into it. Even in Photography, I never learnt to do anything. Someone handed me a camera and I gave it a go. Sometime's that's good, sometimes it's bad. When I was younger I remember someone was going to teach me how to do Film Photography and I guess I got kinda hyperactive when I was younger and pulled off glowsticks and started throwing them around the darkroom which is obviously a stupid thing to do, but when you're a kid you do childish things. I think early on I learnt that if you want something done, to do it yourself and that mindset left me very open to a lot of things, sandwiched together with my sister who taught me to always think on more of a multiple layer, like If you have a painting, does it need, texture, smell etc.
Was there a single moment that kickstarted that decision to work in many disciplines?
Maybe a bit of both. I started it for myself, obviously building up Suffoca and then from that people were asking me to do certain things like from the drawings I took photos of the drawings, the people asked for photos, and asked for video. Then because I really like to socialise and meet people I met Jon, who runs Johnny Cupcakes when he first came over to London, showed him round and just hit it off. We were chatting through the morning when I was at Uni just saying what we could get up to. There's just certain personalities you really get a long with, I think he's a key person in pushing me forward.
Regardless of project of brief, what ideas do you like to put across with a project?
I always like strong visuals, I like to strip things back a little bit. I find stuff that's full confusing, I get it, but I guess story is always key. Putting story into something, on the slimmest of terms is always key. Even just for yourself, so you know where it's going next.
WORKSPACE — Photo by Suffoca
WORKSPACE — Photo by Suffoca
Despite your client list and unlike your friends, you have a relatively low follower count online in comparison. Do you like having less eyes on you that way?
It's a bit of both, some days you wake up and you couldn't give a shit what people think, as long as you getting your stuff out there and people are getting it, and then every now & then you'll put something out there and it won't get the response that you want. It depends what mood you're in but to be honest, not really. There's certain limitations to it, if I had a big following there'd be different jobs I could get, it's pretty much that case now. From when I started that didn't really exist, it was more just about meeting people. Having a big following now can really help you but at the same time you need to develop from the start, you can't just jump straight into a big project. I have friends that have massive followings, but they're still sitting there with no job. It depends what you make of it.
Do you think it removes some of the pressure?
I actually asked a friend that and he said it was the opposite. He said that because he had more people, he knew it would get so many likes, but for me I dunno. Everybody gets a bit vain about their work, it's nice to be appreciated, depends what you cap as being appreciated. If 100 people like one of my photos I'm pretty chuffed.
What you put online is very visually driven, the photos, the video loops, the illustrations and animations. Are it very deliberately curated or are you still just posting whatever you want?
Yeah, I'm very selective. I can't help it. I'll have a good 10 images I'd like to put online and the I'll narrow that do to 1 or 2. I am quite private about my work, I keep it quite close. I have libraries of photos I really like, and hopefully I'd like to put them into little booklets, that's the aim. But the load, when you leave it, gets kinda daunting. I kinda prefer this, and sharing it internally with friends, but I know I should put it out.
Do you the people you surround yourself with influence you more than the people you follow online?
A lot of the people I really connect with, visually and creatively, don't actually live that close to me, so it's a friendship but over the internet. I like to facetime and chat with people, a lot of friends do inspire me but for my work it's probably reflected way more from other people or this travelling I get to do with my projects.
Are you happy with your current approach to projects?
There's room for improvement always, I still feel like when most of the jobs I'm working on, there's still a very big push to get 50% of my idea agreed on and not pushed into a box. That's actually one of the key things this year, I want to work on more personal projects of some sort. Video, stills or these books, just to get it out there. My approach at the moment is really getting people to understand me better, understand the ideas better, because Uni didn't teach me that, friends are teaching me it a bit, it's all down to practice. I want it to be more arty rather than just selling something. I'm trying to do bigger projects, ones that are not too short-lived, everything's short-lived now. One of the things I've just pitched in for, which has sort of got the thumbs up is, is very much where I want to head with my work, which is much more filmic, but the Suffoca side really branched out into the commercial world. I don't see myself as a commercial artist, I'm more lifestyle and it's combining these two.
BOYCE — April 2017
