‘‘The thanks first came from the people, you saw kid’s on cul-de-sacs celebrating their new heros but as the weeks went on it seemed all the pictures were politicians and celebrities and the goodwill faded. It felt like who it was from, overshadowed who it was for.’’
Ian Berry
Ian Berry with his son, Elliott with #iclapfor
The last year of Covid 19 has touched everyone’s lives no matter where they are in the world, and professions from those direct on the front line to those with the knock on effects of lockdown.
Most artists lost all their shows with some ‘going virtual’ but for Ian Berry he found three of his exhibitions still on (some were lost) and not only on, but large solo shows and in foreign lands. Many isolations and quarantines later we are now looking at the anniversary of the start of lock down in the UK as he prepares for a memorable event at a great location this week to mark the occasion.
Here we look back at the huge number of things the artist originally from Huddersfield but now living in Poplar, East London, has got up to often with his son Elliott by his side.
Stay Behind Close Doors at Museum Rijswijk
From setting up a photo in isolation juried show for a museum, to lighting up a message of gratitude in almost every town and city in the UK and Ireland and many around the world, to collaborating with an Oscar Winner to remaking his Lock Down Living Room all of course in the material he sees the world in… denim.
Stay Behind Closed Doors
For many years not only did Ian Berry use denim in his work he has portrayed isolation in urban environments, whether in an empty bar, a lonely soul in a launderette or with Behind Closed Doors, people in their own homes. The latter body of work took on a new life with people now being told to stay home, many, alone.
Ian works from photoshoots he sets up, and last March all of his got cancelled. They were to be people in their own homes. Life now already imitating art. Before lockdown he started to ask photographer friends if they could shoot themselves in their own homes due to the restrictions and as the photos came in, Diana Wind, curator of Museum Rijswijk in The Netherlands and Berry decided they were so good that they should be displayed in the museum also and they made it wider for anyone to enter in what became a juried show.
A Stitch in Time Niki McDonald by Alec Dawson, Sydney, Australia
Denise Stock, Munich, Germany
Ian Berry's home isolation work in denim
Entries came in from all over the world from professional photographers and amateurs alike. 16 were chosen to present in the Museum alongside many dozens more that were lasered to create a denim backdrop. As a great record of the time period they captured Olympic stars training with the event off to people playing games at home. Below, famed New York photo journalist Martha Cooper captured the nightly 7pm clap for the Carers in Manhattan.
you can see more of the project here
Marha Cooper, New York
#ICLAPFOR from Lands End to John O’Groats -
and almost everywhere in between and to countries far and wide…
On Thursday 26th March, the UK followed many other countries around the world with an applause for those out on the frontline caring for us. It came from the people, and at 8pm the night skies erupted with noise in what will one day be remembered very positively. Ian’s son then aged 6, Elliott, wondered what it was all about in a week that broke up his home schooling. His parents could explain it to him and he was hooked - especially being told of people he knew personally that we were clapping for while he was engaged and so interested.
Elliott like many children made a rainbow…
..and sent it to his grandma. But he wanted to make more art
After making a rainbow to send to his grandma he wanted to make more art and he asked his father about clapping hands. Elliott took the photos of his dad clapping hands. Ian Berry then set about making them in denim, not only blue but universal, while Elliott sat next to him drawing. They realised that to portray clapping, they had to show the motion. So they made two. And animated it.
It was intended just to send to some friends to say thank you but one day when Elliott was watching a movie on the projector he said ‘can we put the clapping on the projector?’ The next minute it was being beamed off the balcony… They lived in a building in London where the roof could be seen from miles around but the projector wasn’t strong enough. He looked online and it lead to Andrew Hall of See The Bigger Picture in Newcastle. Once discovering what they wanted to do with a projector he said ‘I can do that’ and this was the starting gun for it to be beamed all over the world.
Through Andrew and some of Ian’s other contacts word got out and it ended up lighting the lonely night skies on places like the Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre in the Newcastle/Gateshead, to Edinburgh Castle and the V&A in Scotland, Conwy Castle to Cardiff City Hall in Wales, all over Ireland and from John o’Groats on the Northern most tip of the island of Britain down to Lands End, the southern most tip in Cornwall and so many towns and cities in between.
It also was seen as far as Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Italy, Mexico City and Sweden and more along with in the USA like New York, LA, New Orleans, Princeton and a beautiful one in Greensboro North Carolina know as ‘Jeansboro’.
click through to see images in each location
With it, online they asked the question, who do you clap for? #iclapfor …
This brought thousands of answers from family and friends to neighbours to whole groups of people we were thanking - many who had been overlooked at the time like people working in the prison services, unpaid carers, and so many other people on the Front Line. These answers were projected on the Angel of the North in Gateshead. By making it more personal, who can begrudge you clapping for a family member?
Angel of the North | Drone Works North East
While the projections were temporary it lasted longer and spread online and in the press and people sent the animation to those they were clapping for. It also got a lasting memory with the mural painting in Walthamstow in East London together With Wood Street Walls and ATMA - on a doctors surgery too! Not only that; Berry never actively sought to ‘do anything’ in this time, he had a full schedule of shows to do and ‘well, I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon, there’s times I wonder if I had, what really could have been achieve with this. The beauty of it was that it was so much more than me. It was never about me. Maybe a little Elliott, but it was who it was for, not from.’
With this mindset Ian Berry invited other artists to send in their clapping hands.
‘I loved to see mine and Elliott’s light up the night on different buildings. Looking back it was amazing to see a quiet street and then see an ambulance or other worker go past. But if it was left up all night, or, done with a council or body that tells people it was going to happen, well, who wants to see the same thing! One of my favourite parts of the initiative was having over 20 artists from all over the world sending their art in and seeing it projected. No one wants to clap alone!’
In the UK the clapping happened every Thursday for 10 weeks. In New York it lasted longer, and it was every night. Having been around a lot of these places we saw the positively both in the action and with the projection. While once pay rises came into the conversation of course we wanted the staff get paid well, especially the nurses. #iclapfor in fact managed to turn the claps in to money raising around $10,000 for NHS Charites Together and Doctors Without Borders before stopping donations once you could get a badge with Pin Your Thanks. But it was more about putting the good will into the night sky.
For the NHS birthday on the 5 July there were special projections on the White Cliffs of Dover, Coal Drop Yards in Kings Cross, at the Piece Hall in Halifax along with two tributes at Hospital at the Royal Brompton in Chelsea, London and the RVI in Newcastle. See more at the dedicated website #iclapfor
Pin Your Thanks Jacket with Jenny Beavan OBE
Ian Berry was asked to join Pin Your Thanks an initiative set up by volunteers in South East London to give a ‘Heartfelt Thanks’ to those who have supported us. He joined public figures like Ringo Starr, Keria Knightley and Joe Lycett and now the Clapping Hands had another legacy - the ‘Peoples Medal’ that were given as a small thank you to those on the frontline.
The Charitable foundation was launched with a projection on London’s South Bank starting with the Clapping Hands then unveiling it as a badge, and then the other badges like Anoushka Shankar and David James. Rita Ora and young competition winner Evie have been added since. Berry joined the others in singing a Christmas song, the 12 days of Christmas.
Ian Berry worked with double Academy Award winner for costume design, Jenny Beavan OBE. They made a denim jacket with Blackhorse Lane in London and lined with with all the letters of support for Pin Your Thanks like Stephen Fry, Dame Emma Thompson, Harry Hill and many more. The Jacket was adorned with all the different care worker badges who had been answered with #iclapfor symbolising all those who had gone above and beyond during Covid-19.
The badges were pinned and sewn on, alongside with acknowledgements for the NHS and Volunteers. Pin Your Thanks through the sale of the badges and the denim jacket are raising funds for NHS Charities Together and Volunteering Matters.
There was lenticular posters made of the clapping hands and were installed in hospitals along with in the Museum Rijswijk which debuted the collaboration with Beavan and a short documentary you will see below. You can get a poster here
Lockdown Living Room
With getting caught up unintentionally with the charity initiatives it is easy to forget Ian Berry is an artist with still a lot going on. While his 15 years of collections were shown in the museum it all ended up falling in under ‘Splendid Isolation’ which was brought together connecting the various bodies that have looked at lonely melancholy scenes all in indigo blue. With his shoots cancelled he was forced to look closer to home for inspiration.
‘I have lived in many places and while sometimes I portrayed what was around me I often moved somewhere I then flew off somewhere else. Like from Sweden to London, then when I lived in London I went to America a lot to base work from. With lockdown, and the beautiful spring we did have, I was forced to see what was around me here in East London and I liked what I saw. It was quite a lesson.
Berry ended up remaking his whole living room and bedroom in denim. With his Chesterfield sofa made in Cone Denim, the plants all in old jeans to the record collection and even a window, looking out to a #Iclapfor projection.
The Museum Rijswijk showed 30 pieces of work of Ian Berry’s art in denim spread over numerous rooms and his 15 year career with the material. From Behind Closed Doors to the lonely soul on the subway, to a newsagent - who were very much on the front line this last year. The show itself is now locked down, but will be extended into the summer. Berry also had a solo show in the Levi Strauss Museum in Germany and one in Basel.
And finally…
‘Do remember they can’t cancel Spring’
David Hockney
A reincarnation of the Secret Garden, first shown in the CMA in New York in 2017 was curated at the end of the exhibition in Holland to echo David Hockney’s words with his new work a few weeks into lockdown in 2020.
All made out of denim - vines and flowers hang down from the museums roof echoing the museum garden and representing the nature. Of course denim and jeans are great contributors to the global issues and environment, especially with the fast fashion and over production and consumption. Showing the flowers and wisteria made out of something originally started as a plant. We all hope for a better future and take many of the lessons of the last year to learn from, not least the way we saw the nature bloom and pollution decline.
Below you will see a short 5 minute documentary about what #Iclapfor was about narrated by Ian Berry and Fiona Berry, his sister, that wrote a poem as Berry Poetic. We hope it will relive some of the memories and positivity of this time last year. We see it that not only have some not got the pay rises that the year deserved, but they also no longer get the gratitude. And this doesn’t mean just the clapping, it ran its course. But the free coffee here, or the queue jump there. All the little moments in a day, that made a big difference, not from government, not from a celebrity, but, from the people.
Watch out this week to see what we’ll do to mark the years anniversary along with the great folks over at Make it Blue. .
A big Thank You to all those supported.. fully listed on www.iclapfor.com but including Cone Denim, Tonello, Tencel, Famore Cutlery, Pin Your Thanks and many more!