Then the Wolves Found Us: Simon Skipp Turns Skateboard History Into Art at Rollersnakes

When I headed down to Rollersnakes in Derby for the rescheduled C.R.E.A.M. cash-for-tricks event, there was plenty happening out in the skatepark, but tucked inside the shop was something completely different that I had been wanting to see for a while. Then the Wolves Found Us, a retrospective exhibition from skateboarder and artist Simon Skipp, had transformed one of the most familiar parts of Rollersnakes into a temporary gallery.

The huge skateboard wall, normally covered from top to bottom with hundreds of decks for sale, had been cleared to make way for Skipp’s work. For a little while, Rollersnakes wasn’t simply one of Derby’s best-known skate shops and skateparks. It was an art gallery.

It felt particularly fitting in Derby.

One of the things we keep seeing while covering the city’s independent creative scene is just how little separation there actually is between its different communities. Skateboarding crosses into art, art crosses into fashion, fashion crosses into music and eventually everyone seems to end up in the same rooms, venues, skateparks and events. Creativity is everywhere in this city, but more importantly, the different parts of it seem to work in genuine synergy with one another.

Seeing Then the Wolves Found Us at Rollersnakes was another brilliant example of that.

And the artwork itself is immense.

From British skateboarding to discarded decks

Simon Skipp comes from Romford, Essex, and has been part of British skateboarding for decades. He became a familiar figure within the scene through the 1990s and beyond, skating for and being associated with names including Slam City Skates, Etnies, Clown Skateboards and Heathen. His history is tied to an era of UK skateboarding before social media and instant clips, when building a reputation meant travelling, turning up, skating and becoming part of scenes around the country.

Alongside skateboarding, Skipp studied fine art, and eventually the two worlds became intertwined in his own practice.

Rather than simply painting skateboard graphics or treating the deck as a conventional canvas, Skipp works directly into reclaimed and previously skated boards. He describes his work as using low-relief and fretwork-style carving, taking something immediately recognisable as a skateboard and physically cutting, carving and reshaping it into something else entirely.

Standing in front of the pieces at Rollersnakes, you can see just how far he takes that idea.

These aren’t skateboards with pictures painted onto them. They’re sculptural objects.

Some use multiple decks and appear almost fused together, while others retain more of the familiar skateboard silhouette before becoming increasingly strange the longer you look at them. There are intricate carved surfaces, eyes, organic shapes and eerie science-fiction imagery running through the exhibition. Parts of it almost reminded me of H.R. Giger, not because Skipp’s work is trying to imitate him, but because of that same feeling of looking at something simultaneously organic, mechanical and alien.

There is so much detail that you find yourself getting closer and closer to the boards just to work out how everything has been made.

Giving old skateboards another life

What I loved most about Then the Wolves Found Us is the material itself.

These aren’t pristine pieces of timber bought specifically to become sculptures. They’re discarded skateboards.

Before becoming artwork, these decks already had a life.

They’ve been skated. They’ve been scratched, battered and thrown around parks and streets. They’ve landed tricks, failed tricks, hit concrete, travelled around and spent time underneath the feet of skateboarders. Each one already carries its own little history in the wood before Skipp even begins carving into it.

There is something beautiful about taking an object that has effectively reached the end of its intended lifespan and giving it an entirely new one.

Rather than sanding away that history and pretending it never existed, the skateboard remains central to the finished work. You can still see what these objects once were. The marks left behind by skating become almost like DNA embedded into the material, sitting underneath this completely new layer of carving, imagery and craftsmanship.

A skateboard that might otherwise have ended up thrown away instead becomes something someone could conceivably keep for decades.

For an exhibition about skateboarding, that’s far more interesting to me than simply hanging a collection of skate photographs on a wall.

Simon Skipp x Heathen

The retrospective has also seen Skipp reconnect his artwork directly with the skateboard industry.

To coincide with Then the Wolves Found Us, Skipp has collaborated with Heathen, a brand he previously rode for, on a limited run connected to the exhibition. The wider collaboration has also included clothing featuring screen-printed versions of his lino-cut artwork, while Rollersnakes has released an exhibition catalogue documenting the show.

That circular relationship between Skipp’s past and present is one of the things that makes the exhibition work so well. Skateboarding led into art, old skateboards became the raw material for that art, and now the artwork has found its way back onto skateboards again.

It also makes Rollersnakes feel like exactly the right place to show it.

Skateboarding is a creative culture

There has always been an artistic side to skateboarding. Board graphics, photography, filming, DIY spots, zines, clothing and music are all woven into the culture, and skateboarders have a habit of looking at ordinary objects and seeing completely different possibilities in them.

A handrail isn’t necessarily a handrail. A kerb isn’t necessarily a kerb. A set of stairs isn’t just there to walk down.

Skipp’s artwork feels like an extension of that same way of thinking.

Even an old skateboard doesn’t necessarily have to remain a skateboard.

He takes something familiar, looks at it differently and finds another possibility hidden inside it. The result is some of the most interesting artwork I’ve seen in a long time.

There is also something great about seeing work like this displayed at Rollersnakes rather than removed from its origins and placed exclusively inside a traditional white-walled gallery. The boards are surrounded by the culture they came from. Outside, people are skating. Inside, new decks are being bought. During C.R.E.A.M., cash was being handed out for tricks just metres away while these battered remnants of skateboarding’s past had been turned into sculpture.

New boards become old boards. Old boards become art.

It all fits.

Then the Wolves Found Us is a brilliant retrospective of Simon Skipp’s work, but it also says something much bigger about the relationship between skateboarding and creativity. These objects have already lived one life, carrying their scratches, impacts and memories with them, and Skipp has managed to turn that history into part of something completely new.

Beautiful, strange, intricate and occasionally unsettling, the work deserves to be studied up close.

If you ever needed evidence that a battered old skateboard can be far more than a piece of wood destined for the bin, this is it.

And once again, Rollersnakes has provided another point where Derby’s skateboarding and wider creative scenes can collide.

Long may they keep doing it.

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