Events > Edition Launch

26 May 2007

FWD Edition Series: Jeremy Laing's Bed of Nails

Artist
Jeremy Laing
In this Series

21 Apr. 2007
FWD Edition Series: Derek Sullivan's Law & Order



Art Metropole is super excited to announce our new our FWD edition by celebrated artist and fashion designer Jeremy Laing. For his edition Laing has employed digital jacquard weaving technology to produce the image/object titled Bed of Nails, a colourful collage of enlarged acrylic fingernails. As a fashionable accessory, acrylic nails, simultaneously tacky & beautiful, also generate a hard extension of the hands naturally sensitive and soft touch. Captivated by these formal juxtapositions, Laing develops the contradictions further through the edition itself – creating an object with a dual nature, suitable as both a fine art hanging or a utilitarian throw.

Bed of Nails is the third in an on-going series of pieces involving acrylic finger nails. The first, a pinata filled with handfuls of acrylic nails and strung up with a net of hand-knotted hair weave, was exhibited at Pinata Party, a group show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, in New York. The second, titled Press-On: Extensions for Daily Perseverance, a prototype for an edition of solid gold nails nested on a bed of hair and found shoulder pads, was exhibited at Barr Gilmore’s Solo Exhibition and subsequently at Art Metropole.

Please join us at Art Metropole on the afternoon of Saturday May 26th, 2007 to launch this edition. Jeremy Laing will be present.

Jeremy Laing would like to thank Roses Nails & Spa (1118 Queen Street West, Toronto)

Bed of Nails by Jeremy Laing
Edition of 10 + 2 Proofs
Digital jacquard woven blanket
50” x 70” / 127cm x 178cm
$600


Canadian-born Jeremy Laing spent his childhood on an army base in Germany. He learned to sew at age 13 by watching his mother, and has been making clothes ever since.

Jeremy’s self-taught method, which combines organic and geometric approaches to pattern making and construction, was honed while studying in Toronto, on exchange at Westminster University in London, and through an apprenticeship with Alexander McQueen. Following his apprenticeship, Jeremy worked freelance developing showpieces for five of McQueen’s collections, demonstrating his strength in innovative pattern making, garment construction, and the use of textile to create form. In 2011, Jeremy was a finalist for the prestigious ANDAM Fashion Award.

In Jeremy’s view, garments are a sum of parts, all functioning in relation to one another and, ultimately, to the body. His collections often stem from his elaborations on simple principles of construction and form, drawing simultaneously from couture and tailoring traditions.

Previous art projects include the Virginia Puff-Paint series of installations, performances and videos, in collaboration with Will Munro, that screened at the 2004 Liverpool Biennial, is included in the 2007 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and is the subject of a recent artists’ book, published by the Art Gallery of York University.

Laing was a co-founder and organizer of the Westside Stitches Couture Club, an informal performance-based sewing circle that, among other events, hosted a T-shirt relay at Art Metropole, as part of the School of Serial Production.

His work has been featured in Canadian Art, The New York Times, Another Magazine, Azure’s Design Lines, V Magazine, Soma, Tokion, Dazed & Confused and is the subject of upcoming features in Descant, Vogue and I.D.

Jeremy currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Image

Edition of 10 + 2 Proofs, Digital jacquard woven blanket, 50" x 70" / 127cm x 178cm, $600.

  1. Jeremy Laing - Bed of Nails