Your Space Or Mine: Sports Banger

In 2021, as part of our Your Space Or Mine project, Sports Banger appeared on multiple billboards in cities across the UK. The striking compositions of imagery and text were a celebration of its new studio, Maison de Bang Bang, as well as a tribute to art, music, and fashion on our streets as we come out of lockdown. Jonny said, “I hope the billboards make people smile or piss people off. All the emotions.” Sports Banger is the anti-establishment, bootlegging artist making fashion, art, and music with a DIY ethos. We spoke to founder Jonny Banger about empowering communities and bringing the rebellious Sports Banger spirit to the UK streets.

A true from-below phenomenon, Sports Banger punches up and talks back to authority. Born from the tradition of anti-establishment DIY culture, the acclaimed clothing brand has been making an art form of conspicuous, unapologetic bootlegging. Founded in 2013 by Jonny Banger – an artist working across fashion, activism, culture and curation, music, publishing and so much more – Sports Banger channels the frustrations, passions, dreads, and hopes of a generation. Always focused on community, Jonny explained, “Sports Banger is a celebration of people, our relationships with each other, and the outside world. We know lots of people from all different worlds and we like to bring everyone together. Everyone we work with, there’s a personal relationship there somewhere. The most important thing is art and fun.”

Having made its mark on the fashion industry by appropriating the branding which has encroached so deeply (and without consent) into our shared cultural consciousness, Sports Banger revels in taking back agency. Jonny told BUILDHOLLYWOOD, “I see bootlegging as people reclaiming the logos that have been shoved in their faces.”

Since making his first t-shirt back in 2013 (baring the slogan ‘Free Tulisa’ in support of the N-Dubz singer being hounded by the British tabloid press), Jonny’s vision and his practice as an artist gathered huge, rapid momentum. The recent Maison de Bang Bang studio is not simply a fashion label, it evolved into a record label, publishing house, and artist’s studio with an “insane” sound system. Jonny admitted, “We’ve accidentally built a nightclub.”

Over the years, Sports Banger has taken its own guerilla approach to promotion. “I’ve had quite a few billboards before but I nicked them all and made the adverts on my own for the cost of £10 at the printers and a bit of paste,” he told us – making our Your Space Or Mine collaboration a bit of a full-circle moment.

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