Frank Laws spent a year as a labourer before he went to art school, and it was obviously time well spent. He credits the job with instilling a work ethic, but lugging hods of bricks around all day certainly gave him an eye for painting them, as his unglamorised urban scenes often feature the red brick buildings of the industrial age, rendered in minute detail.
It is one of these signature buildings the Londoner has created for Memory Palace, a “walk-in story” at the V&A museum inspired by an original story by Hari Kunzru. The dystopian tale is of post-apocalyptic “memory renegades”, fighting to retain human knowledge lost after a catastrophic electronic disaster wiped all digital storage. Laws’ part in proceedings involved imagining a prison building in which a captured memorialist is being held. Architect CJ Lim constructed the walls in which the work is viewed, creating a claustrophobic space, complete with prisoner’s chair, which the viewer peers in at through the gaps.
It’s not all doom and gloom for Laws, however, as when he isn’t in London he’s in Paris working as Louis Vuitton’s in-house artist, doing their window displays. Swings and roundabouts, eh? The V&A event, which also features work by Le Gun, Oded Ezer, Erik Kessels and Luke Pearson, is running until 20th October.
Frank Laws’ Studio
Photo, Ian Cox
