Ian Berry (artist) Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

In 2018, Berry brought the Record Store back together in the US to make a whole high street, including the launderette (changed to Laundromat) and the Secret Garden (changed to a community garden) together with a gallery showing some of Berry’s pieces.

This interactive installation, titled the Secret Garden, was a piece that the viewer could walk through, on top of a denim path that was filled with various flowers and plants, from roses to cacti, wisteria to chrysanthemum that hung down like a trellis. It was shown at the Children’s Museum of the Arts New York in 2017.

Berry was so committed to this cause that he exhibited at the Children’s Museum of Art New York where he showed the Secret Garden in 2017. In 2018 he travelled the United States and gave lectures in many schools and when he found that many students were inspired to do his work, but didn’t have the correct equipment so Berry arranged for many companies to step in and donate tools like scissors, denim and rotary cutters. Many Children, parents and teachers send him examples of their work inspired from him.

Berry’s 2016 London solo show was a success. The gallery had said “it’s easy to get carried away with the novelty of the medium and forget that, first and foremost, Ian Berry is an artist with something to say. Well, in this two-part show he is speaking loud and clear.” Art Critic Tabish Khan wrote it was a top 5 London Exhibition for Fad magazine ‘What Berry can do with denim is astonishing. He creates multi-layered paintings, his attention to detail is superb and this exhibition is an impressive feat’

Berry was commissioned to make a portrait of the late Formula One racing driver, Ayrton Senna, in 2015 to commemorate the 20th year of his passing. He immortalized Ayrton in denim, including jeans from the family of Ayrton who look after his legacy with the Instituto Ayrton Senna. The piece was unveiled in São Paulo, Brazil before the Grand Prix to the press and family and was met with positive reviews. The piece subsequently traveled around the world including to Amsterdam, Birmingham, Silverstone, Singapore, Rio, Barcelona Grand Prix, Turin at Adplog, at Williams, Hungary and Monaco

In 2013, Berry was named as one of Art Business News’s “30 under 30” influential artists in the world.

In 2013 Berry turned the gallery into a vintage record store. It was in response to the changing High Street and the loss of a lot of independent Record Stores in the UK, where many in the music community and like minded people would meet. The whole of the gallery window was turned into a vinyl store. It was filled with records, tee shirts, records and framed albums. It wasn’t just any albums however, they were all chosen for their connection to the denim story.

In 2013 Luxottica launched a new Ray Ban Wayfarer, all made in denim and worked with Berry. At a launch party in New York Blondie performed and as part of the show a portrait of its leading lady, Debbie Harry was unveiled. Berry wanted to do the commission as Debbie Harry was a big part of the CBGB bands down the Bowery in the 70’s. It was this group of bands that changed the history of music, but also denim. Debbie harry was also one of the first to be seen to wear double denim The portrait got rave reviews and reactions from the media on the opening night.

Berry became friends with Blondie’s Guitarist Tommy Kessler and made his jacket that he has worn on stage since 2013 including at glastonbury, UK.

Berry made a portrait of Lapo Elkann that now hangs above his desk. Elkann, is an Italian entrepreneur and grandson of Gianni Agnelli, the former controlling CEO and controlling shareholder of Fiat Automobiles. He is a big denim fan and had made a denim upholstery for a Diesel-edition Fiat 500 as well as a Smeg fridge all in denim. Vanity Fair magazine listed Elkann in its International Best Dressed List in 2008, and added him to its Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 2009. In an article with DuJour in 2013 Elkann said it was one of his ‘prized possessions’.

At one Event in Birmingham there was an emotional showing and presentation of the people by many who knew Ayrton closely like David Coulthard, who replaced Ayrton in the team after he died in 1994, Allan McNish who had been his test driver as well as a former F1 driver and David Brabham who was in the same Imola race when Ayrton died.

Berry was born in Huddersfield, Kirklees, England in 1984, and has lived in Landskrona, Sweden and Sydney, Australia.

Rock and Roll music and denim have gone together through time. With Elvis to heavy metal, Bob Dylan, hippies and punk, the pioneers of youth music have worn jeans. Many of the most famous album covers of all time feature this artisan fabric: the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA for example. In 1975, the musicians who hung around a New York bar called CBGB started to crop their hair and rip their jeans. The look was spotted by musician and designer Malcolm McLaren, who adapted it into punk back in London with the Sex Pistols. Berry was portraying much of this history. He spoke with Robert Elms about the albums, who he had met most of the people and bands depicted in the albums.

By the end of the 1970s, there were around 12,500 Launderettes in the country. That number has now slumped to 3,000, with 450 in London. During one photoshoot, Berry went back to a launderette he had only visited on a recce the week before only to discover it boarded up. Berry portrayed the interior of launderettes in Crisp Street Market, Poplar, Bow, Ladbroke Grove and Holloway Road in London.