British Caribbean artist and designer Samuel Ross creates works in a range of media through an exploratory analysis of raw material and functionality. In 2015, Ross founded the fashion label A-COLD-WALL*, rethinking streetwear through meticulous construction and bold, Brutalist silhouettes. In 2019, he established SR_A SR_A, an atelier that engineers experiences for the body and mind, balancing a utilitarian sensibility with an eye toward the future. The artist’s industrial aesthetic has manifested both in his own work and in collaborations with major brands including LVMH, Nike, and Apple.
In HEAVE, Ross presents several distinct but connected bodies of work, anchored by two of his rarely shown abstract paintings. Sculptural seating exemplifies the artist’s insatiable curiosity for the potential and limits of material, exploring the intersections of Eurocentric Modernist forms and West African furniture design. Four hand-painted utility jackets showcase the overlapping of Ross’ intuitive mark-making and functional forms, while gestural process sketches representing each of the disciplines presented in the exhibition offer viewers further insight into his multifaceted creative process.
About Samuel Ross
A polymathic creative force, Hublot Award-winning British designer, creative director and artist, Dr. Samuel Ross MBE, deftly mines the cross-sections of socio-geographic relationships, enlisting rhizomatic micro and macro references in the formulation of his works. Navigating themes located in anthropology, sociographic tendencies and 20th–21st Century industrialized societies, Ross’ output offers a commentary on equality, engagement and collective experience. At the nexus of these concerns lies a continuous relationship with civility, and the civic duty of not only the artist, but design, itself.
Born in Brixton in 1991, Ross graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design and Illustration at De Montfort University, Leicester. Upon graduation, Ross embarked on a career as a product designer, working for a number of high-profile brands, advertising agencies and industrial design practices, while concurrently focusing on his own creative endeavors spanning experimental film, street art and garment design.
He soon transitioned into fashion, working for Virgil Abloh; first as Virgil’s First Assistant for Design, encompassing OFF-WHITE and various installations, then subsequently with Kanye West’s creative content agency, DONDA.
In 2015, at just 25-years-old, Ross self-funded his label, A-COLD-WALL*– renowned for its material investigation and innovation, married with incisive explorations of Brutalist and abstract forms and precise execution. Emblematic of Ross’ expansive creative scope, each A-COLD-WALL* collection is launched in unison with ambitious performance and installation art elements. Through this holistically pioneering approach, Ross’ A-COLD-WALL* is credited as redefining the parameters of streetwear and high fashion.
During the Hublot Prize exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2019, Ross launched his latest venture – SR_A (Samuel Ross & Associates). SR_A is an industrial design studio operating within the fields of interior installation, architecture, furniture design, sound design and sculptural/visual communication, described by Ross as a vehicle for “…the progressive study of design and practical experience creation.”
For his partnership with the gallery, Ross has set out to build a pluralistic visual and material language that maps a nuanced narrative landscape. Artfully intertwining formal references from West African furniture archetypes and Euro-centric Brutalist tropes, Ross’ works propose a projected post-Atlantic Black-futurity – one where the intellectual dominance of Modernism has been splintered, expanded, redirected and reconfigured. Across all, ritual is a keystone, evident even in the material processes through which the works are realized.
Ross’ accolades include being named the British Fashion Awards’ Emerging Menswear Designer (2018) and receiving the Hublot Design Prize (2019). In 2020, he was named as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 [Europe] and won both the GQ USA Fashion Award and People of the Year British Fashion Award, the latter specifically for his philanthropic endeavors. He has also been a finalist for both the LVMH Prize and ANDAM Award. Ross was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for servies to fashion.
He has collaborated with brands, including Converse, Dr Marten’s, Mercedes-Benz, Nike, and Oakley, as well as noteworthy artists Virgil Abloh, Daniel Arsham, Futura and Takashi Murakami. Specific SR_A partnerships include those with Apple, Beats, Nike, Medicom, Hublot LVMH, Kohler, and Acqua Di Parma.
Ross lives and works in London, UK.
