Page 316 - They Also Served

so depressing that the Americans would not exhibit it, and it spent 30 years folded up in a garden shed in New Jersey.
Returning to the UK in 1969, Laing bought a derelict Scottish castle to renovate and live in. In 1973, while at the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, he studied the sculptures of the soldiers and had an epiphany. Using modelling clay as an early medium, he started to experiment with creating human figures, later learning to cast in bronze and building his own foundry. Perhaps the most famous work of this period is the 27-foot-tall statue of players contesting a line-out which stands outside Twickenham rugby stadium.
With the publication of the Abu Ghraib torture photographs in 2003, Laing returned to pop art as a medium of
protest. When his paintings were exhibited in New York, they were so controversial the gallery hired armed guards to protect the art. In response to the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London, Laing produced Truth or Consequences, a 3D view which shows Tony Blair with the ruins of a London Bus and George Bush with the ruins of Baghdad. The painting was exhibited at the National Army Museum in 2007. Over a career spanning 50 years, his work moved from pop art through minimalist sculpture into representational sculpture and finally back to pop art. Gerald Laing died on 23rd November 2011. Three years later, his 1963 painting of Brigitte Bardot sold for £902,500.
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