Founded in London in 2000, Clown Skateboards grew from a shared love of skateboarding, music and art. From the outset, the brand treated the skateboard deck as more than a functional object, bringing together visual art, street culture and the influence of music into a distinctly independent identity. Clown’s early history is closely connected to Banksy’s formative London years. Boardman and Malik were involved with the 2000 Rivington Street Exhibition and the release of Banging My Head Against a Brick Wall, before Banksy created Clown’s now-iconic logo and artwork for its first skateboard designs. The brand launched that same year with the Clown Banksy Test Press series — hand-printed decks produced in small numbers to test the response from shops and riders, borrowing the idea of a “test press” from music and dubplate culture. What began as an experiment became an important piece of early British street-art and skate history. After Clown stepped away from production in the mid-2000s, the brand returned in 2020 and revisited its archive, completing versions of the original Test Press project using the original acetates from 2000. The resulting works connect Clown’s beginnings directly with the period in which Banksy’s imagery was still moving through skate, music and street culture long before reaching the position it holds in the art market today. Today, Clown continues to sit at the intersection of art, skateboarding and independent culture, carrying forward the collaborative spirit that defined the brand from the beginning.