GERALD LAING

Selected Citations and Comments

Catechism - Instruction by question and answer, especially on religious doctrine. In the bottom third of the canvas the grieving women of Beslan bury their children. The graves are marked by white wooden posts. Further up the canvas the figures dissolve into pixels, which introduce their own officious, arbitrary and busy version of reality. The white posts are echoed by the reflections in the river of violent explosions as the glowing city of Bagdad is bombed. Above the people float the hooded torture victims from Abu Ghraib, in a manner suggestive of the Crucifixion. They are standing on Andy Warhol Brillo Box sculptures, which substitute banality for intellectual rigour.

Gerald Laing, 'Artist's Notes on War Paintings', unpublished manuscript, 2004

A number of the most provocative pieces on view incorporate images from the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. Catechism, the largest of the new paintings (10 by 6 feet), alludes to the scene of the Crucifixion. It features near the top centre of the canvas, against a background of Baghdad in flames, three figures, each modelled after the well-known photo of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner with his arms outstretched and attached to wires, standing on a wooden box. In Laing’s acerbic image, the figures stand on Brillo boxes, a reference to U.S. consumerism as well as to American Pop art. Below the figures, he shows a gathering of mourning women.

David Eb, 'Gerald Laing at Spike', Art in America, September 2005