SPACE, SPEED,
SEX
Exhibition of Pop Art
from the 1960s by Gerald Laing
15 November – 8
December 2006
Space, Speed,
Sex will be a major
retrospective of work from 1962 to 1969 by pop art pioneer, Gerald Laing. Two exhibitions will run
concurrently: a loan exhibition of
about 25 paintings and drawings will be held at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, 38 Bury
Street, St James’s, London SW1 and a selling exhibition of the artist’s prints
to include graphic works and multiples will be held at Sims Reed, 23a St James’s
Street, London
SW1. Both exhibitions will
demonstrate Laing’s acute engagement with popular culture of the time and
reinforce the artist’s reputation as a major contributor to the 1960s pop scene,
a reputation which has, in the past, been overlooked.
The shows will capture
the diversity of Laing’s artistic output during this period, ranging from
earliest works (1962-63) and his engagement with French mass media images of
femme fatales, Brigitte Bardot (1963)
and Anna Karina (1963) to his later
series influenced by American popular culture, including astronauts, skydivers,
bikini girls and dragster racing.
The two exhibitions present an unprecedented opportunity to view the
artist’s prints alongside his paintings and sets up an interesting dialogue
between the different mediums.
Gerald Laing (b 1936,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne) was a student at St Martin’s
School of
Art from 1960 to 1964 and
some of his best known images were painted while still at art school. In 1963 Laing held his first exhibition
at St Martin’s entitled ‘Paintings of Photographs/Photographs of Paintings’ in
which he exhibited Brigitte Bardot
(1962) for the first time, a painting which has since become one of the most
enduring pop images of the 20th century.
During his first trip
to New York in
1963 he met Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Rosenquist, who were
themselves just emerging as important artists. He spent that summer working for Robert
Indiana in his loft on Coenties Slip and on the strength of this he was invited
to work and exhibit in New
York straight after leaving art school, where he spent
the rest of the 1960s, painting and exhibiting frequently, virtually as an
American artist.
In 1964 Laing held his
first one-man show in New
York at Richard L. Feigen & Co, a gallery which
specialised in showing the work of British pop artists. For the remainder of the 1960s he showed
regularly in Feigen’s three galleries in New
York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Laing was invited to show at the
American pavilion at the 1967 Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil and it
was during this period that the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired one of
his works, thus categorising him at that time as an American
artist.
For Laing, the
perfected images of subjects exclusive to American popular, often suburban,
culture – such as stars and starlets, drag racers, astronauts and skydivers –
embodied an iconic individuality which flourished under the aegis of the
American Dream, a dream which was sustained only until the nemesis of the late
1960s demonstrated its fragility.
Notes
to Editors:
Exhibition
hours: Monday – Friday, 9am –
5.30pm. Two fully illustrated
colour catalogues accompany the exhibition. Admission is free.
Background
on the artist:
Gerald
Laing was born in Newcastle in 1936. He studied painting at St Martin’s
School of Art, London, between 1960-1964. After graduation he moved to New York and lived in America until
1969. During this time he exhibited
at the Feigen galleries in New York, Chicago and Los
Angeles. He
was artist-in-residence at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies,
Colorado
(1965). He returned to the
UK in 1969 where he renovated
the ruined Kinkell
Castle, near Dingwell,
where he has lived ever since. He
continued his close ties with the USA and was Visiting Professor of Painting and
Sculpture at the University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque (1974-5). He taught sculpture at Columbia University in New York in the mid 1980s. In 1975 he established a bronze foundry
in order to cast his own work at Kinkell Castle with assistance from the late
George Mancini. His numerous public
commissions include Callanish at Strathclyde University, Glasgow (1971); The
Frieze of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, George Street, Edinburgh (1979); The
Fountain of Sabrina, Broad Quay, Bristol (1981); The Conan Doyle Memorial,
Picardy Place, Edinburgh (1989); Axis Mundi, Tanfield House, Edinburgh (1990);
Ten Dragons, Bank Underground Station (1994); Four Rugby Players, Twickenham
Stadium, Middlesex (1995); Portrait bust of Sir Paul Getty, The National
Gallery, London (1996); The Wormsley Cricketer (1997) and The Wormsley sundial
(2000) at Wormsley Cricket Ground, Buckinghamshire; The Cover Drive, Lords
Cricket Ground (2002); Falcon Square Mercat Cross, Inverness (2003).
(ENDS)
June 2006
For
press information or jpeg illustrations please contact Iona Sale, IONA PR, on +44
(0)1451 832 268, 07721 030 825 or iona@ionapr.com. For information on the exhibition
contact James Holland-Hibbert on +44 (0)20 7839 7600 or jhh@hh-h.com