Artworks

Jeremy Laing

Artwork-Life Balance (Ongoing Relation, Wear and Repair, 2010-2021), 2021

A decade's worth of the artist's household's holey socks darned this past winter, left-over yarn, self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder in the context of social isolation, various plastic hanging devices, chain, steel mobile components (with thanks to Serge).
Dimensions variable

© Jeremy Laing, courtesy of the artist

In this work, the seemingly simple act of mending socks becomes elevated and, in a way, celebrated. The socks themselves become part of a complex and delicately balanced mobile which takes the everyday materials out of their usual context and allows the viewer to focus on the handmade repairs and on the plastic drying rings from which they are hung. Why shouldn’t this readily available and mass produced object be a main component of a 12 foot high mobile in the middle of a museum? Is there any object more suited and appropriate for the role? The time, physical use and labor, circumstance and context of each individual component is acknowledged, and by gathering them together and presenting them in this new arrangement, Laing opens space for yet another more honest and nuanced understanding of each. In the words of the artist:

But here I must affirm that Queers are not broken, as a holey sock is, though they are often paranoically interpellated as such, and that to darn a holey sock is, in my practice, not a repair but an opportunity to make its Queerness more gloriously visible.