The very first time that I saw Louise Bourgeois’ work was at an exhibition at The Irish Museum of Modern Art when I was a teenager.
I was blown away. I remember the show had lots of her suspended tapestry pieces and I was really enamoured by the way she had combined textiles with sculpture. Then, once I discovered more about her life, I became completely infatuated. I loved the fact that the subject matter was so personal and how she reflected her life in her art in such a transparent way. Bourgeois’ parents ran a tapestry restoration workshop. Her job there was to embroider over all the nudity depicted in the tapestries, whereas her own work is incredibly phallic — so making art was like a form of therapy for her. I was also really attracted to her use of the spider motif and how it represents textile weaving and her mother. I thought it was so brave because it was incredibly exposing.
There are so many bodies of work by Bourgeois I adore, but the Cell installation series is one I’d like to mention. This is a series of welded sculptures the size of a room, filled with objects. I love that a lot of the structures have garments hanging in them and many are her own. There’s something beautiful about seeing silk washed undergarments juxtaposed with metal cages. Another piece I’ve always loved is Janus in a Leather Jacket, a huge, heavy sculpture cast in bronze, displayed by suspension. There’s such a weight to some of her pieces but then there’s an unbelievable fragility and sensitivity to others. The breadth of that is just so powerful.
Bourgeois’ influence can be seen throughout my collections, but there are two in which she was referenced in a very direct way. The first was for Autumn/Winter 2015, which was a collection inspired by a 2006 series of hers called Lullaby, where she’d drawn and printed these amazingly bulbous shapes on to music paper. I translated the shapes into these padded pieces that distorted the body when they were worn. I also did a collection for Autumn/Winter 2019 where I officially collaborated with the Louise Bourgeois studio. It was a real full circle moment. It feels the same way with my store on Wooster Street in New York, where we have some of her pieces that act as a backdrop to the heavy Bourgeois influences in my work.
Recently I’ve done a collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, creating a pair of earrings inspired by the artist’s work that have been re-editioned. Later this year, I’ve been asked to curate a show and one of the artists I’ve invited is Louise Bourgeois. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to see the Hayward exhibition. I’m incredibly excited about it.
