Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett had, until recently, been remarkably quiet since the release of their last album ‘Plastic Beach’ in 2010. It’s always known straight away what Damon Albarn is up to, but Hewlett is able to flitter in the shadows and only reveal his latest projects when it suits him. Said projects seem to have all come at once now, with his new (and debut) exhibition The Suggestionists opening today (18th November) at London’s Saatchi Gallery, and work also started on Gorillaz mk. 4. Hewlett tells us how each of his different projects inform each other, and how what he’s produced for the exhibition could be seen bleeding into the next phase of Murdoc and co.

The Suggestionists is a three-part exhibit - ‘Tarot’, ‘Honey’, and ‘Pines’ - drawing together over twenty years of experience and experimenting, and including such pieces as a tower of cards, hundreds of hand-drawn pine trees, and an homage to ’60s and ’70s erotic magazines. The artist has been working on the art that has ended up in this new showcase since the release of ‘Plastic Beach’, and didn’t originally intend for the trio of pieces to come together in such a way. “I had no intention of exhibiting these pieces together, or at all, when I first started working on them at the start of the decade, but towards the end, I started to see a link between them all. I’ve wanted to do an exhibition for years, and finally had the relevant pieces which fitted together well. I waited because I wanted it to feel right, and wanted it to be a little bit different.”

Somewhat surprisingly, The Suggestionists is Hewlett’s first exhibition in his decorated twenty-year career. “I’ve always been a bit lazy in trying to get an exhibition together, and at the same time I wanted to wait until I had something I was very happy with, and that I could exhibit at the right place. When I finished ‘Plastic Beach’ I wanted to go to the opposite end of the planet and do something completely different. It’s not always necessarily the content of your work that gets influenced by what you did before, just wanting to try something new. In the last five years, I’ve been learning to paint in oils, which is the only medium I’ve never tried to use in my career. I made some terrible mistakes, and unfortunately you can’t rip up a canvas - you just have to stare at it in the corner of a room until you can paint over it.”

As the polarising three phases of Gorillaz would suggest, Hewlett isn’t one to stay in his comfort zone or re-hash old ideas. “I’m into trying different things. Doing the same thing all the time isn’t very inspiring, and doesn’t get me out of bed in the morning. All three of these projects are different, through different mediums and with different subjects. The ‘Honey’ erotic movie posters were all photographed by me. I got myself a lighter camera and learned to use that, and I took photographs of my wife - she agreed to be my model for some reason! I don’t think you should stick with the thing you’re comfortable with, as you won’t progress and move forward.”