Inside the lurid, laugh-out-loud world of Alex Gamsu Jenkins

To dis­cov­er the draw­ings of Alex Gam­su Jenk­ins is to trip, fall and tum­ble into a gar­ish world of strange, knock­ing your head a few times on the way down. Craft­ed with hor­ror and humour in equal shares, the 29-year-old illus­tra­tor depicts scenes plucked from the freaki­est depths of the mod­ern id.

For instance: in one, a sen­tient tread­mill cack­les as it swal­lows its pant­i­ng user. In anoth­er, a grotesque slug crea­ture patient­ly observes a well­ness tuto­r­i­al on YouTube. Else­where, a kid jams a joint into his nos­tril and inhales, only for a gang of float­ing mouths to appear – grin­ning – and whis­per nas­ties behind him. And they’re some of the more con­ven­tion­al ones.

Through his work, Alex (who added ​‘Gam­su’, his mother’s maid­en name, to his title after dis­cov­er­ing anoth­er illus­tra­tor oper­at­ing as Alex Jenk­ins) has become a nar­ra­tor for the col­lec­tive anx­i­eties expe­ri­enced by mil­len­ni­als in the world today. His char­ac­ters drink, smoke and sweat their way through life, slaves to both their devices and unshak­able self-loathing. 

“When it comes to the process of try­ing to think of ideas, what’s going to spark in your brain is going to be things that you’ve prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced your­self,” he says, smil­ing. ​“It’s not like my work is a direct por­trait of me, but I think it’s always some­thing I have expe­ri­enced. Oth­er­wise, how would I think of it?”

Hunched in the cor­ner of a cosy pub just off Hackney’s Broad­way Mar­ket in Lon­don, Alex doesn’t quite fit the stereo­typ­i­cal pro­file of the tor­tured artist. He’s warm, well-dressed and built like an NFL quar­ter­back. How­ev­er, there is some­thing in his voice that hints at the appre­hen­sion that is often seen in his work.

Grow­ing up in an artis­tic fam­i­ly in Penge, south-east Lon­don, Alex was encour­aged to draw from an ear­ly age. But after reach­ing sec­ondary school, his enthu­si­asm fell away. ​“I went to a school which wasn’t very encour­ag­ing, artis­ti­cal­ly,” he explains. ​“It was prob­a­bly like any­where in sub­ur­ban Lon­don, but it was a lit­tle bit rough – one of the worst ones in the bor­ough. I moved away from draw­ing com­plete­ly for, like, 10 years.”

Though his inter­est nev­er fad­ed, he did stop tak­ing it seri­ous­ly. In the ​“macho world” that was the all-boys school he attend­ed, being arty was – in so many words – dis­cour­aged. ​“I was a bit intro­vert­ed. I always remem­ber, you know, try­ing to fit in with every­one who was around me,” he con­tin­ues. ​“So I was fair­ly qui­et, maybe a lit­tle bit lost. I think most teenagers are lost. And a lit­tle bit insecure.”

How­ev­er, years lat­er, things began to swing back when his uncle – a keen sketch­er him­self – bought him a book on Robert Crumb, the con­tro­ver­sial Amer­i­can car­toon­ist and promi­nent fig­ure in the under­ground comix move­ment of the late ​’60s and ​’70s. Old­er now, Alex was imme­di­ate­ly trans­fixed by the work. ​“He did these draw­ings that were lay­ered, rude, grotesque – like they were on acid. I was like, ​‘Whoa, this is amaz­ing, ​‘I want to try and do that.’”

So, aged 22, he enrolled in an illus­tra­tion BA at Cam­ber­well Col­lege of Arts. There, he began immers­ing him­self in the world that had cap­ti­vat­ed him as a kid. Slight­ly old­er than the cohort of class­mates who’d joined straight out of col­lege, while younger than the mature stu­dents, Alex exist­ed some­what sep­a­rate­ly to the rest of the course: in his own world, if you like.

“Look­ing back, I think it real­ly helped in a way, because it made me a lot more stu­dious. I’d worked in a Sainsbury’s for four years, scratch­ing my bel­ly but­ton. If I had not done that, and gone through that, and been a bit lost and bored and under­achiev­ing, things might have been different.”

Left to his own devices, he was able to ded­i­cate him­self whol­ly to devel­op­ing the style that he’s syn­ony­mous with today – one he hap­pi­ly describes as ​“com­ic grotesque” – as well as the afore­men­tioned Crumb, he cites influ­ences that range from Fran­cis­co Goya (the Span­ish painter of the late 18^th and ear­ly 19^th cen­tu­ry) to Drag­on Ball Z (the ani­mé series). 

Dur­ing his final year, he met with an illus­tra­tor who’d grad­u­at­ed from the same course years before to con­duct a short inter­view as part of his dis­ser­ta­tion project. While they were talk­ing, Alex asked him if he any advice on what to do once he too was fin­ished at Cam­ber­well. The response was sim­ple: ​‘Don’t hide away, get your­self out there, start email­ing.’ But for the young artist, that kind of con­fi­dence wasn’t some­thing that came all that naturally.

“I used to be real­ly awk­ward about show­ing my stuff to peo­ple,” he admits. ​“I mean, even now I am. But I used to get real­ly sweaty and ner­vous. If I had to present some­thing that I’d done, I’d just get it out of the way and then walk away.”

But, upon grad­u­at­ing, he did as he was advised and began putting him­self out there. Even­tu­al­ly, it led to jobs for the likes of Time Out and Vice, which exposed his work to larg­er audi­ences for the first time. Mean­while, his Insta­gram account became an ever-updat­ing archive of lurid, laugh-out-loud scenes, detail­ing the col­lec­tive unease of young peo­ple all over the world.

“It’s not some­thing I real­ly think about before­hand, or I dis­cuss with peo­ple, but usu­al­ly an idea will pop up, and then peo­ple will be like, ​‘Oh, yeah, I can relate to that. It’s more unconscious.”

Fast-for­ward to the present day, and Alex has amassed a glob­al fan­base. He’s designed cloth­ing, illus­trat­ed comics and secured com­mis­sions for The New York Times, Adult Swim and Vans (to name just a few). The world that he cre­at­ed for him­self – first as a small child, then as a stu­dent who felt that, per­haps, he didn’t fit in – has opened itself to the rest of us, brassy tech­ni­colour and all.

For the Lon­don­er, though, it’s just a case of doing what he’s always been good at. Through draw­ing, Alex Gam­su Jenk­ins has found a voice that may have oth­er­wise elud­ed him, deliv­er­ing mes­sages that res­onate on the vastest of scales. It’s fun­ny, weird, gross, pro­found, com­fort­ing and deranged. And com­plete­ly his own. 

“I’ve always felt like I’m real­ly bad at deliv­er­ing jokes, telling sto­ries. It’s a skill that I’ve always been like, ​‘I wish I could have that ver­bal­ly.’ When you know some­one who can do that real­ly well, everyone’s drawn to them,” he says, before paus­ing momen­tar­i­ly to gath­er his thoughts. ​“I nev­er asso­ci­at­ed myself with sto­ry­telling before. But now with the comics and every­thing… yeah, it’s enjoyable.”

This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2019.

Read more sto­ries from This Is Off The Wall, an edi­to­r­i­al part­ner­ship from Huck and Vans.

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