Some years ago while killing time inside a record store in downtown Athens, i was looking at the artwork on one of the albums by one of my favourite projects, James Lavelle's UNKLE. The album was Never Never Land, and it portrayed the pointy head aliens that later on became the project's trademark. I later on discovered that the front cover's artwork was created by one of the most acclaimed graffiti artists of all time, Leonard McGurr who worked under the alias of Futura 2000. McGurr kicked off his artistic journey in the 70's painting trains in New York city and ended up being the live on-stage backdrop painter for The Clash's 1981 European tour which was his first work of his career as a legal artist. After an extensive collaboration with the Clash Futura 2000 withdrew from the spotlight until Lavelle gave him the incentive to work again bringing him alongside his own label's art director Ben Drury, to create the artwork for several releases on Mo' Wax records. This also led to Futura producing the imagery which has largely defined the UNKLE project. The entire package of the Never neverland album was a collaboration between the two and Mo Wax's photographer Barney Bankhead. Today Futura designs his own clothing label FUTURA LABORATORIES with a store located in Fukuoka, Japan and his art has been exhibited at V1 Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark
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