Back in January, we stumbled upon an interesting reinterpretation of our now famous Issue One cover featuring the notorious Vincent Gallo. Although we weren’t certain of the artist who was responsible for the sketch, we speculated that perhaps the reinterpretation was a rendering by none other than the provocateur himself. Months later, we’ve found the real artist, John Paul Thurlow. The illustration is a part of the London- based illustrator ’s 100 Covers series, a collection of incredibly stunning and precisely illustrated re-interpretations of contemporary, classic, and little-known covers of magazines. PLANET spoke with JP about his upcoming 100 Covers exhibition at the KK Outlet, Vincent Gallo as a Christ-like figure, and his inspiration behind the series.

What was your inspiration and how did the Covers project come about?
I made a cover version of a 7″ single whilst at college years ago. It was “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” by Baccara and I was a little confused as a kid about the gender of one of the singers. I loved the idea but forgot about it. The circumstances of the start of Covers were kind of fucked up. I was made redundant. I got very depressed. I went away on an artistic retreat to Japan. I lived in a Buddhist temple for a while. I started drawing, drawing the contents of my room. There was a copy of Elle I had for the flight. I drew it. I drew it again and again. I knew I had something, the college idea came back to me and I haven’t stopped working on it since then.