Sports Banger is the defiant creative collective of protest artist Jonny Banger. The project began a decade ago as an underground bootlegging operation, and has since grown to become a fully fledged fashion house, record label and satirist creative company.

It all began with a ‘FREE TULISA’ t-shirt, which Banger printed for UK dubstep mainstay Skream, to grant him guest list to Wireless Festival.

This birthed a series of bootleg prints, including Nike swooshes on NHS logos and Sports Direct rip offs, as well as a series of protest art that found an equilibrium between rave culture and politics.

Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich, & Famous is the complete story of Sports Banger so far. We went down to the ICA for the book launch.

The book’s blurb reads: “Sports Banger is a genre-defying, boundary-breaking fashion collective run by Jonny Banger, who interrogates British pop culture, fashion, class and politics through the subversion and (mis)appropriation of branding.”

This sentiment carried through into the launch; the venue’s walls were draped in art, there were limited edition scarves on sale and free Jägermeister samples floating around the crowd.

The event began with a spoken word reading from Lemn Sissay, which set the anti-establishment tone for the evening.

Shortly after, Jonny Banger spoke with revered installation artist Jeremy Deller. The pairing spoke about the Sports Banger heritage, the contents of the book and the wider socio-political environments that so often spurred the brand’s output.

Following the conversation, loudmouth Liverpudlian Sharon Le Grand took to the stage, to deliver a chaotic, hilarious rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, which was underpinned by an unsettling, brazen chorus of shrieks and wails.

Attendees were then treated to a live performance from eclectic house music artist Josh Caffé, whose recent album Poppa Zesque received critical acclaim.

With friends and family present in their masses, what shone through from this book launch was the magnitude of the Sport Banger journey, and its effect on such a large array of creative people.

You can buy the book here.

Header photo shot by Sully (@_sullman)