Courtney MC on religion, rage and cartoon pussies

It’s summertime and an air of possibility surrounds me. I’ve just got back from a trip to Los Angeles, and will dart to Spain in a few hours. It’s 5 am and frankly, I should be exhausted, over it and slightly wishing summer would just hurry up. But today, I feel excited and invigorated. Why? Because a day trip to Paris awaits, to hang out with none other than Courtney MC.

Courtney is someone whose work I’ve admired for a long time. She has an effortless grace and ability to cross industry borders and mix things up. Her work pops up everywhere, yet she remains intriguing and enigmatic. She has had a fascinating artistic and personal evolution. As a child, the seeds were sown for a life in fashion, spellbound by the scenes on Fashion TV. These early impressions propelled her to great heights; from her decade-long tenure at Givenchy, during which she designed visuals for Jay-Z and Ye’s collaborative album Watch the Throne, to creating multiple performance outfits for Travis Scott’s Circus Maximus tour. Name any big music-meets-fashion-meets-art moment in recent history and chances are Courtney has had a hand in it. For me, this is what it’s all about. Artists like Courtney can turn everything they do into a success and it lands, every time.

Now, as I’m sure many readers will know, the Eurostar terminal is not a train station, nor an airport. It’s a strangely comforting yet unsettling limbo between Britain and what was once our safety net… Europe. The betterland. It’s a beast I have battled with many times. A gateway to the great minds and artists of France. “No sir there is nothing in my extremely heavy and ominous camera case”… “Yes sir, I am only going to Paris for 6 hours”… “No Sir I have not used up my 90 days in Europe, I hope?”…and finally… “Merci beaucoup”.

After spending the journey reviewing my notes, bleary-eyed, there’s suddenly 20 minutes left to Paris. My nerves are shot. I don’t know what to expect. At Gare du Nord, I wait for my Uber. It never arrives. Fuck it, I’m walking. Hot, sweaty and determined. I arrive at the shoot location and ring the bell and I’m buzzed in. From behind the door comes a warm and welcoming hello. And there she is… Courtney. Hallelujah, she’s absolutely lovely. Her charm and grace quell my nerves and she leads me inside. We drink coffee and smoke our vapes while discussing her new body of work and how we want to photograph it. She lets me into her world and her exciting future projects. Her love of creating characters has not dulled; it shines through with a distinct comic book flair and the inventiveness of her younger self, obsessed with fashion from afar. This is a first: an artist who also happens to be an art director. Phew, this is going to be easy.

Finn Constantine: How would you describe your attitude to creativity?

Courtney MC: I think it’s something that I feel quite protective of, almost religious about. The spirituality of it kinda has to come first, and the business of it is very secondary. I know that if I were to be forced to create with no real depth or meaning I’d get stressed, so I need to be careful about how I navigate my work and the schedule and formulas attached to it. What I do is I really indulge in the process and let that inform the outcome. For example, I love sewing by hand, painting, and drawing, so I will dedicate my time to those processes and see what garments or artworks emerge. I don’t like to design an outfit and then pass it over to someone else to make because I miss out on a very meditative and reflective part of the creation. And likewise, with painting, the image is created through the brush strokes so I’m never going to have an idea and pass it to an assistant. I want to enjoy the brush strokes because otherwise what’s the point?

FC: You have worked across multiple industries. What was the moment when you decided you wanted to move towards works on canvas?

CM: I think once my job in fashion became so uninspiring and censored. I’ve spoken about this a lot, but I have no time for my creations to be dictated by market research and trend forecasting. It was never a part of the plan but at a certain point, I knew that there was imagery I wanted to explore that felt deserving of a different medium than clothing and a different environment than the one I was working in.

FC: Tell me a little bit about these works we photographed.

CM: The paintings of the solo women are from the series Muses of the Lower World from 2022. They are mixed media, screen print, spray paint and oil on canvas.

The twin girls are from a new as yet untitled series that I am developing this year and is print on metal and hand-distressed.

While the general theme and subject matter are very similar, the two year gap between the works has changed the nature of the narrative slightly. What hasn’t changed is my love of drawing these demonic women. It’s a fun theme that you can find in certain Japanese manga and hentai genres which I collect and love to study, and it has a really naughty villainous nature to it. Character creation is one of the most exciting things for me when creating art and clothing.

The Muses era for me was a time when I still had a lot of feminist anger, coming off the back of many years of struggling with what it meant to be a woman in this industry and in life in general. I think you can feel that in the technique and colour choices. The Muses are very graphic, enraged and boxed into their frames. My intention was to demonstrate how it feels to be objectified or reduced to the body you were born in, but the real conversation comes in discussing how different people perceive the imagery.

This new series has begun with a much softer, playful edge to it.  There have been many personal revelations these past two years, as I get closer to 40. Age has brought me so much strength, self-assurance and a level of respect that I wish I had when I was younger. Now that I have all that, I can afford to be bolder, weirder, more childish and more myself in my work. These new paintings are going to be in honor of that.

Don’t get me wrong though, there is still a very defensive quality to me that doesn’t feel completely resolved. I know that energy isn’t going anywhere because it’s needed; both for myself and for the younger generation that follows.

FC: Who are your mentors? Both those you’ve met and those you’ve admired from afar?

CM: I’ve had a few amazing mentors. Adrien Yakimov Roberts was an amazing tutor who really believed in me and kicked me up the arse at university, and who I credit for my career. And obviously Riccardo Tisci who I credit for taking my career to the next level and teaching me so much about design and art. These days, I’m trying to be my own mentor and trust myself and hype myself, because I don’t have a massive community around me. It’s tricky to find that kind of support when your work is so independent and personal and you are a working mum. It’s quite isolating. I’ve been let down a lot in this industry unfortunately, which is frustrating, so I do look to inspiration from afar; like Darren Romanelli, who really inspired me early on in my career.

FC: These works are pretty explicit but are offset with cartoon characters and otherworldly faces. What’s the ultimate message?

CM: I fully expect many people to view my work as explicit, because we are trained to look at women’s bodies as sexual offerings. The intention was to dare you to objectify them and recognise that they don’t exist purely for consumption. Their faces are a reminder that they could destroy you. The little cartoon pussies are a fun way of protecting their modesty because deep messaging can be lost without a little humour. I think all of this is rooted in the fact that I don’t want anyone to ever feel like they own even the tiniest piece of me, because I’m just fed up with the male gaze. I really reject it personally. Some women love it and I respect that, but it makes me very uncomfortable.

FC: Tell me a little more about the process of making these works.

CM: For the paintings I used ’70s pornography as source material to find the right composition and characters to work from. It’s not important that they were porn images, it was just the best way to find the forms. And the faces are created out of some deep darker corner of my imagination.

FC: We spoke about your collecting and we see your toys in these images. Can you expand a little on why it’s important to you to gather objects?

CM: I collect a lot of toys! Mostly vintage Japanese robots and monsters because they are beautiful little objects. I always wanted to be a character designer and the monsters from Ultraman are my absolute favorite. I met the lead animator of Ghost in the Shell in Japan and was so inspired by his house which was full of all the toy characters he had created. That took my obsession to another level. But I’ve been collecting since I was a teenager with my brother. We grew up in Singapore so we had a lot of access to the universe of anime. I think it’s important to collect what inspires you and to keep yourself surrounded by reminders of that.

FC: You’ve worked at fashion houses such as Givenchy; what impact do you think this has had on your visual artwork?

CM: Working under Tisci at Givenchy had a big influence on me because I was exposed to so much research. Without that, I would have never discovered the artists and images that I love or explored religion, sexuality or strangeness in my work in this way. I was always attracted to those subjects so it was a huge gift to be nourished visually and ultimately, it led to me moving a little away from clothing and more into art and creative direction. The creation of those shows was an emotional rollercoaster because it was a total investment of creativity.

FC: Do you feel Paris has had an influence on your creative output? What do you love about the city?

CM: Paris taught me about luxury and elegance, technique and process. Had I not moved here, I might have fallen into the trap of chasing hype and superficial trends – something that I find overwhelming and ultimately unsatisfying. Paris has allowed me to slow down. There is no panic to keep producing out of fear of being forgotten. The French attitude, to some degree, is very relaxed and self-assured, and there isn’t much of a “scene”, except during fashion week. I love that. It helps with my anxiety.

FC: What’s next for you?

CM: After an exciting year of working on big creative projects, including the Superbowl Halftime Show performed by Usher and Travis Scott’s Circus Maximus and UTOPIA tours, I have returned my focus to the expansion of my own brand. The product is an in-depth experience of my personal style, aesthetics and narrative, through reconstructed clothing, fine jewellery, lifestyle and art pieces, with a strong focus on sustainability and craftsmanship. Every product is crafted to be a ‘forever’ piece; a future heirloom.