Ian Berry’s installations and beautiful images of scenes from everyday life are incredible even before you are aware that they are completely made from denim. He eschewed art college for Advertising but art won through in the end. His work is in numerous private and public collections and his incredibly successful iclapfor project inspired by his son Elliot was projected across the globe.  “I look at the changing fabric of our urban environments,” he explains but it’s important to remember that “[denim is] my medium, not my meaning. I’m more than the material.”

What is your background in textile art?

I actually have no formal training, well, not in textile art – on the day I was supposed to go to Art School I didn’t go, I was still in Australia for the summer after college and I’d decided instead to go on a creative advertising course at University. I’m from a northern town in England, Huddersfield, and I listened to those who said there was no career in art. I don’t have any regrets in many ways, the course and then a few years working in adland were really amazing alongside some very talented people.

I think the nature of the kind of advertising on big brands can sometimes be more ‘creative’ than some art and I am still amazed by some of the talented people I met. The main thing we learned was problem solving and how to think differently. But at the end of uni I started working with denim, more to do my own thing away from commercial advertising. Eventually that took over and I didn’t even make my third year working for ad agencies. Since then I’ve had many incredible years seeing the world with my art.

What is it about textiles that appeals to you?

It was street art that got me back in to creating if I’m honest, I loved it, as well as the mentality around it. In the early 2000’s before even Banksy was such a household name, I was exposed to a lot of it in London. I thought I would do work in denim – on the street. I started working with jeans 15 years ago and as I say, it was just on the side while I went into advertising. I can’t say I knew a lot about textile art specifically at the time, the artists I knew were painters or working on the street. Along the way I have become more aligned with artists using unusual materials, but who have pushed it passed the gimmick.

Working with denim I started to understand the fabric a lot more and started coming across more textile artists. That said I remember a moment in 2010 when Fiber Artist magazine got in touch. I have to admit at the time I wasn’t expecting much, expecting it to be crafty, but then I looked at a PDF copy of the magazine and it changed my whole perspective and world, so much of the work inside blew my mind and it was a big turning point, not necessarily in my work, but of Textile Art and artists. I’m friends with so many now.

I’ve realized in the recent years I love the indigo as much as ‘using jeans’, you think blue is a cold colour but I feel much depth and warmth with indigo. While I say my work isn’t about ‘denim’ there is so much of a story and history with it, and so much symbolism, both good and bad. I layer the material, something that gets lost online, to make almost sculptural pieces. There are as many as 15 layers of cut up denim, and the texture of the material is something I like to play with too – again, this can get lost online and print. People often write to me asking what I paint on the denim with, and I have to say it’s just denim, scissors, glue and my hands. That’s it.

How do you describe your work?

Even after so long I do struggle to give it a name. Some call it collage, but it feels slightly wrong, others mixed media, but its only one, denim. It’s textile art, but I don’t stitch, sew, nor quilt. It’s photorealism, but not in paint. Others say I paint in denim, and while not really true it is the way I try and craft my pieces and thinking of light and shade and tones, and the direction of the warp and the weft and the gradient of the fades. If they don’t know my work, most people think it’s a blue toned painting, even until quite close.

But my work isn’t all about it being in denim, in fact I think I try and hide that it is. Using the parts of the denim with interesting textures and fades to create a shine, making a piece that is full of light from what is really quite a dull material. I portray contemporary life and those in urban environments, and for me denim is an urban material that differs from quite rural origins. What better material to portray contemporary life than the material of our time? Jeans. If you go to most streets now a large majority of people will be wearing denim, but not only that it symbolizes so many issues of our time.

I look at the changing fabric of our urban environments, whether it is the declining high street with the places that used to be centers of the community closing, like the pubs, launderettes and news stands vanishing. To the flip side of that where many spend more time at home, isolated – yet surrounded by materialism. This year my Behind Closed Doors body of work, first started in 2015, took on a new meaning.

Some call it denim art and I detest the phrase, I’m an artist just my medium is denim. Because my material is linked to the denim industry, we all know what fashion is like and people approach me to work with them and then they pay someone to remake my work or, copy my style. Along with the lies on sustainability many in the industry profess as well as the heavily commercial nature of it, it has put a strain on my feeling toward the fabric sometimes. I think another reason why I just use it as my medium, and it not being ‘about denim’. I got pulled into the industry many times, and while I have many great friends in it and know all the key people, sometimes I think it distracts away from what my art is all about. I often think, were I an oil painter it would be me going to oil rigs or conferences on oil! The flip side is it can lead to new ideas and a better understanding of the material, but on the whole I love what denim and jeans means to the average person on the street, not the expert.

It’s my medium, not my meaning. I’m more than the material.

Can you talk us through how you create a piece?

I work from photography, mainly my own or that that I commission. Last year (2020) when lock down happened I had a week of shoots planned in people’s homes and these all got cancelled. It wasn’t great but I soon asked some friends to take photos in their homes – suddenly my work took on this new meaning. I had portrayed isolation in urban life for years. Now many of us were in it with the pandemic. Many photographers, both professional and amateur sent in photos and many were so good that I had a conversation with Diana Wind the curator of the Museum I was going to show at the Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands, and we decided they were so good they should be shown in the museum as photos (not me turning them to denim)

Around this time it was Spring, my favorite time of year in the U.K. This Spring was a really good one and as it blossomed I started to notice more what was around me. I’ve lived in many countries and sometimes I found that I always had to move or go somewhere else to be ‘inspired’,  I lived in Sweden for five years and by the end I was flying to London and the States to take photos to work from. Then I moved to London and started going to LA. I really started to appreciate what I had around me – aided that the canal outside the window looked so vibrant in the Spring. I ended up re-creating my living room in denim, in both installation and 2D.

To go back to the original question though, creating a piece after the idea development in theory is a simple process. It’s just the jeans, or items like denim jackets, cut and stuck, layering them to blend into one another to make the pieces. I use my eye to find the bits of the denim with interesting contrasts and fades – this is the labour intensive part. It can be really tough as you can’t mix it like paint, and sometimes you have one chance to cut the perfect piece out. I can go hours looking.

I know it’s a tricky question but roughly how long does a piece take?

Yes, it is a really tricky one as I can work 16 plus hours a day, as well as weekends, but you’re talking a number of weeks. The way I work doesn’t lend to it going fast. As I mentioned in the previous question, I could cut corners, but I think the detail is one of the things that got me to where I am and what my clients and galleries are drawn to. It may mean I turn down a lot of shows and work, but each finished piece makes it worth it.

Where do you source your denim from?

It started with my jeans then my friend’s jeans, then their friends. Neighbours would leave it for me then people would come to shows with bags of denim. I’d source it from vintage and charity shops and then denim brands and mills would send me their seconds and samples, sometimes many of the same pairs, helping me with consistency.

Over the years Pepe Jeans London have sent me many of their samples and seconds – which is great as it’s like working from a big pot of paint, rather than a single tube, knowing when its empty, it’s gone. Cone Denim send me a lot of raw denim on a roll, used as both a ‘canvas’ as well to laser on – this is only for the installations – the Secret Garden being the major example. I also use Tonello in Italy for this.

But I still get donations when I open my door or through the post, but admittedly I seem to get less nowadays than I used to.

What inspired your amazing iClapFor series?

It was quite the accident and was never planned to become what it did. My son Elliott was taken aback by the first night of clapping. We are in an old dog biscuit factory and we all went out on the balcony and the opposite balconies were all out, it was quite emotional and really loud. He kept asking when we would do it again and of course asked what it was all about. We were pleased we could tell him, while he was engaged and saw the health care workers as heroes. I’d much prefer him think that way than most of what society celebrates as their heroes. We could tell him about family and friends that were on the front line.

He had drawn a rainbow for his grandma, and we got talking about what else we could make, so – he took a photo of my hands, and we did two. I made them in denim, and he sat with me, then I made a simple animation. We were just going to send it to some friends and family who were health workers. Elliott was then watching a film on the projector and said, ‘can we put the clapping on there?’ The next minute it was being beamed from the balcony. The following night I took the projector out and left it going on to a building on the street, and then tried to put it on the roof of our building – that can be seen from quite a distance around London. It didn’t quite work so I looked into getting a new stronger projector – which led to a man called Andrew Hall in Newcastle. I loved the idea of a solemn clap on the quite streets where the only traffic seemed to be ambulances.

After a long conversation he asked “what are you wanting to do?” and I ended up telling him. He loved the concept and he said he would do the same up in the North East. Then his network joined in. It went online, and then it went around the world and asked the question (which I think was the strongest part) who do you clap for? www.iclapfor.com

How far did it reach?

Many projections happened in the end without me even knowing but it did reach places like Medellin in Colombia, Mexico City, Rio, New York, Los Angeles, North Carolina and New Orleans, Australia, and here in Europe places in Sweden, Italy, France, Germany, and of course it’s almost every city and town in the UK and Ireland.

Not only that, it was incredible to see it on places like Edinburgh Castle, the Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre, the BT Tower in Birmingham, and all the way from Land’s End to John o’Groats. I didn’t see many myself in real life but did see the one on the South Bank at the Royal Festival Hall, that I did with Pin Your Thanks that then revealed the pin badge of it, along with those from Ringo Starr, Keira Knightley and Joe Lycett.

As I said the best part was the interaction with people who gave us the answers to ‘who do you clap for?’ which made it more personal, who can begrudge you clapping and supporting a family member or friend? It also brought up different sectors that many didn’t previously talk about, the best for me was the Prison Service workers. Many of the answers were projected on the Angel of the North in Newcastle/Gateshead. I then did a collaboration with Jenny Beavan OBE, my friend – who also has a couple of Oscars to her name for Costume Design, not to mention many nominations. We made a denim jacket, with my other good friends here in London – Blackhorse Lane Ateliers where we pinned using various pin badges and sewn on badges representing the many different care workers. Inside were handwritten messages of support by the likes of Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry. A lot of this is currently showing in my solo show at Museum Rijswijk. There is also a small documentary https://www.instagram.com/p/CJJrAzyDDsl/

Apart from your amazing success with that what is another career highlight to date?

To be honest, that was a side thing, it wasn’t supposed to go around the world and it wasn’t really about me. I declined to go on a few TV and radio shows as I feared they would make it all about me. Too many people were doing things to get on the bandwagon and maybe it was my own fear, I really didn’t want to make it look like I was trying to get on it. I probably failed many who wanted to support because of it but I didn’t want to make it about me. I don’t really see it as my success, it happened by accident and it wasn’t really about me and my art – so many people played a role – my biggest joy was getting many clapping hands from other artists submitted, many of them textile artists like Cas Holmes, Barbara Shaw, Daisy Collingridge, Sophie Standing, Alicja Kozlowska, Terry Aske, Béatrice Beraud, Zariha Rachadi, Clockwork Presses Holly Brown and Juan Manuel Gomez amongst many other artists.

It was about saying thank you to others. The media had made the whole thing, in the UK anyway, a bit of ‘too much’ but it was weird as they burnt it all out – and then – nothing. I can’t help but think that is why we ended up in this mess now.

For my own career highlights I think you should only go on the here and now, your last work or your shows now. When I started working with denim, I got a lot of press and exposure, this was before the social media days. I retracted a bit as a lot of it was due to the ‘gimmick’ nature of it. The ‘can you believe its denim’ kind of articles but I also got on the 30 under 30 lists which was incredible, but I really wanted to focus on who I was and wanted to say as an artist. I pushed and pushed my art. I turned down a lot that appeared too commercial and focused on my gallery work. So now it is great that a lot of that can now be seen in various museums. Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands until April / May, and I should be able to reveal another European city for Spring/Summer (Covid dependent) and then at Textil Museet in Sweden in the Fall til 2022.

I have many plans coming and collaborations. For me by far and away the best highlight above awards, acclaims and articles is standing with people at a show and people seeing the real thing. I don’t even feel like an artist to those that haven’t seen the real thing, but to those that have, as good as anyone in the world.

You can see Ian Berry’s work at Museum Rijswijk, in The Netherlands from February til April or May (tbc)

TBA – Spring/Summer (Europe)

Textil Museet – the National Textile Museum of Sweden Oct 21 to Jan 2022.

The Hague Art Fair TBA

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