Artworks

Jeremy Laing

Canadian, b. 1980

Swatched Pot/Potted Swatch #13, 2019

Glazed stoneware, bamboo, sand, and woven cotton
Dimensions variable

© Jeremy Laing, courtesy of the artist

With this selection from his Swatched Pot/Potted Swatch series, Laing presents what is arguably his most figurative work in the exhibition. The grouping or community of works exist as a whole but no two are the same. We see Laing’s use of the handmade combined with the mass produced. Hand-shaped ceramic vessels and handwoven textiles embellished in some cases with nail polish samplers from the salon contain a multitude of options and choices. Each work holds a different posture which seems to shift and change as the viewer moves around the group.

In the words of the artist:

We treat objects, in a sense, the same way we treat subjects. Some are deemed important, and some are not. Some do all the work and get no credit. Some rest mainly on the fact that they are historically of a certain shape and scale and positioned on a wall and therefore have inherited a supremacy. These things require interrogation and an opposition, and I am interested in doing that in a way that is representational in some way, but also not, in the sense that, while my objects are also about subjects and people and bodies, I'm not presenting that with any specificity … because of the exclusion inherent in any representation.