Denim is embedded in our clothing vernacular. If you’re not wearing jeans yourself today, other people will be wearing them. Lots of people. Denim seems to bridge class and status and culture regardless of our position in society, how much money we make and where we come from. While wearing our favourite blues, we travel and see things, work and play, share good times with friends and do mad things.
For a long time we’ve talked about the secrets and stories held in the old jeans we transform into our products. We wonder where these jeans have been, what have they seen and who have they helped. We also wonder what new adventures our products will go on as they make their way into people’s homes and lives.
Denim seems to have this exceptional ability to capture our stories. Whether it’s in the faded patches and paint splatters, or the little rips, marks and blemishes that over time become part of it’s materiality, our jeans become vessels for our personal histories.
British artist, Ian Berry, shares stories about the human condition and contemporary society through his striking denim artwork. Like us, he understands the dynamic connection between this versatile, yet common fabric and the people who wear it. His work shines a light on some of the gaps in our human experience and denim tells these stories in a beautifully intimate way.
“Denim is now such an urban fabric, after having such rural origins. What better way to capture everyday urban life.”—Ian Berry
For over a decade, denim has become the sole medium for Ian’s work. He’s become so technically adept that imagery of his denim collages on websites and in video can be mistaken for prints. However, the work is painstakingly created by hand, it’s layered and detailed and highly designed.
His impressive folio of work includes bold and graphic portraits crafted of well-known modern day icons like Debbie Harry and Georgio Armani, and various series showcasing laundromats, London pubs and New York scenes, which share a deeper sensibility, a melancholic loneliness.
In his series, “Behind Closed Doors”, he portrays perfect homes with all the trappings, akin to those in the glossy pages of home magazines. However, the subjects look lost and lonely, disconnected and isolated. With the rise of social interaction online, we’re losing some of our physical connectedness with other people. We’re living less as part of local community and Ian questions the impact of this shift on our mental health. These works are moving and a succinct observation of how we’re living right now.
Equally, both his series, “My Beautiful Laundrette” and “London Pubs” talk about the demise of these cultural hubs in London as they disappear at an alarming rate. Laundromats were once a hive of activity and perhaps the only place that some would have their daily interaction with another. Of course, it goes without saying the importance of the corner pub in English life, which connected community within it’s walls. These buildings are, like in other urban centres around the world, falling away to apartment and shopping centre developments. Another signpost of the changes community life has undergone in recent times.
Ian has scaled up his denim artworks into full-sized installations exhibited around the world. Earlier this year, he created “Secret Garden” at the Children’s Museum of Arts in Manhattan using the final roll of denim made by the last major manufacturer in the United States, which closed last year. The aim was to inspire a love of nature in children and parents and an urge to seek it out within the charged built-up environment of a large city like New York.
It’s these connections between material, maker and community that we find so powerful. Art is such a compelling vehicle for expressing ideas, asking questions and making observations, and perhaps even getting us to seek out the connection we desire with others.
We thoroughly recommend hopping over to Ian’s website to view his work, installations and book. You’ll no doubt be as captivated as we are about the versatility and power of denim as a medium, and Ian’s exacting skill and vision as an artist.
x KT
Images: Courtesy www.ianberry.art
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