They say that opposites attract. The sun and the moon, the night and the day, the east and the west. It’s easy to forget that without one, the other loses its meaning. It’s two sides of the same coin. This seemingly opposing energy is exactly what lives between artists Sequin Kay and Gerry Kinch, and yet together, it’s synergy.
The two artists have had perpendicular rises in the industry. Sequin followed her artistic instinct through the academic system. She trained formally in fine art and painting at Camberwell College of Arts (now UAL) and holds a PGCE from Goldsmith’s University. Gerry started with painting pub signs and went on to master the art of gold leafing or gilding. His work is most famously in the entire Asian room at the British Museum. But for both artists, the act of creation is a lifeline. It’s where they go when they want to go back to themselves.
In their first-ever artistic cross-over, they’ve teamed up to immortalise some of the world’s most influential women: Princess Diana, Cleopatra, Beyonce, and Veronica Lake. Each piece was painted first by Gerry, and then covered in crystals by Sequin. They’ve partnered with Swarovski to capture these women in their best light.
The pieces tackle themes of tragedy, power and transformation. They stand at eight feet tall, and pictures simply don’t do them justice. I had the privilege of sitting in their presence for an evening in Essex, where the artists have been bringing them to life over the last year.
We sat down to discuss the journey thus far, why they chose these women, and why the world needs them now.
Square Mile: How did you two first meet?
Gerry Kinch: It was roughly nine years ago. We met in a studio in Trinity Buoy Wharf which is in Canary Wharf. I was working on something for a wealthy client of mine who owns the restaurant called Sheesh, in Chigwell. He wanted to Sistine Chapel painted so I did it on canvas in the studio and had a professional plaster it to the ceilings. That whole restaurant is like my gallery. That was what I was working on with Sequin appeared one day, covered in sequins. She walked in on a sunny day, sparkling, and I said, ‘Woah. Who is that?’
I have always been a Renaissance artist. I’ve never understood Sequin’s art but I’ve always loved crystals. I love the energy. We always said we’d work together but we never got around to it. It wasn’t until we reconnected years later in Ibiza that we started brain-storming. I told her about my client, we had dinner at Sheesh and we put together an idea and walked him through it. He loved it, and we got to work.
Sequin Kay: I was living in Ibiza at the time. I was starting to really take my art seriously. I was working on a Zodiac collection with different archetypes. It was quite abstract. I’d always been an artist fluctuating between jobs, I was making work and also teaching children. I was introduced to the owner of that studio in London, and he invited me to use it. I was working on sequin chakras, mirrors, abstract pieces, and exhibiting in London. I was making these goddess sculptures out of crystals at the time. Gerry saw my art work and said, ‘God, I know who you need to meet.’
GK: It all just sort of evolved. I knew instinctively that there was something we needed to do. There was this energy in the crystals. It was my ability to paint mixed with her ability to work with these crystals. I felt that it was going to happen. The stars just aligned.
SM: Sequin, when did you first start working with these materials? What was the first thing you ever used?
SK: The first material was mosaics. My school commissioned me to make a really large mosaic when I was fifteen. It was mosaics, then paintings, then sculpture and then I went on into art college. I was making mad sculptures, breaking things, burning things, and making installations. I had four years at Camberwell, and I left quite lost and confused as an artist. I didn’t feel like I found the thing that was driving me. I was creating a lot but it felt like expression with no direction. I was living in Brixton after my degree and I came across materials naturally. You go through a transition in your life, a dark period, and you focus in on something. That’s when I started focusing on light. Why does something catch your eye and make you feel something?
GK: Light is where every artist is headed really. It’s like Turner. You’re a moth going around the light.
SM: Can I ask what was happening that was dark that made you seek out the light?
SK: I was going through challenging mental health, battling with certain addictions, and having an identity crisis. Who am I and what’s going on? I was a young person in London and that led me to hyper-focus on detail. By focusing on detail it allowed me to let go of things that were out of my control. It became a healing practice, putting the sequins on. I was doing telephones and canvases, and taking old childhood objects and covering them. I did a type-writer, polly pockets, barbies. I buried them all in the art work. I sold a lot of them. I was mummifying the past, and making it new again. It was that transformation I loved.
Beyonce and Veronica Lake
SM: Did you feel that the art-work was your vehicle out of the darkness you were in?
SK: It was a massive vehicle. It was loss of self turning into finding self through creating. It was like unwinding your brain, meditating. There were so many realizations I had around my behavior, who I am, and what my direction in life is while working. When I was working on this project, putting all the crystals on, I was having incredible thoughts. Just focusing my attention helped me so much.
SM: What are each of your individual relationships to the rocks, the crystals, and the energy?
GK: To me, they have fascinating energy on their own. They are just amazing things. Their ability to cut and reflect the light, I had so many ideas of what we could do with them. I just thought between us, something’s got to happen.
SK: For me, it’s a deep connection to water and life itself. When you put crystals on top of a painting, it transcends time a bit. It’s a primordial, primitive relationship to water. We are attracted to things that reflect the sun, that reflect nature.
GK: What’s happened with this fusion is something completely new. Ever since the impressionists, people have been trying to do something no one else has ever done. Even though people have painted and covered things in crystals before, no one has done it like us. I paint everything, and then Sequin goes in. It’s like another painting on top. No one’s done this before. It’s original and exciting and it works. She’s kept all the colors and still allowed the painting to live through.
SK: It really adds a new dimension, a new life to each of these pieces.
SM: How did you get the funding for this exactly?
GK: I’d been working for some wealthy individuals for years. I knew this was a long, expensive project. I knew we needed someone behind us. I know this guy, he loves the arts. I’ve been painting for him for twelve, thirteen years. We sat down with him at Sheesh and we showed him what we had and soon as he saw Cleopatra, he said, ‘Yes. that’s the one.’
SK: It was actually a screen-saver I’d saved on my phone a year prior. It was the photo of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. It was my guiding force. I had originally proposed a whole different collection. The conversation was going and he just looked at my phone and said ‘What’s this? Did you make this?’ And I said no, this is a picture, it’s my guiding force.
SM: My Cleopatra.
SK: She’s everything. I remember looking for images of what the ultimate symbol of power, of femininity is, to remind me of my own power. The power of image is so unbelievable, so underrated. He looked at it and it all became a synergy. He said, ‘Well maybe you should make this.’ Then it became these deeper questions: What would this mean? How big would we do it? Why would we do it? I’d never worked on portraiture before. I needed to go away and think about this piece.
SM: What were some of the answers that came up for you? Why her? Why now?
SK: I think the world needs it. The world needs hope, beauty, and strength. This would be so impactful for both of our audiences. We knew it had to be created.
GK: The four pieces have added up to be a real female empowerment statement. It’s Cleopatra, Princess Diana, Beyonce, and Veronica Lake.
SK: And transformation.
SM: Why transformation?
SK: Elizabeth transformed into Cleopatra. Cleopatra transformed a whole culture. Film also transports and transforms you. Watching that film years and years ago, it is such a transformation. When you watch Elizabeth Taylor walk onto that screen, it’s one of those ridiculously powerful images.
Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra
GK: There’s so much magic behind that time period as well. We still don’t know how the pyramids were made. They were such an advanced artistic culture, no one really knows how. There’s been a lot of magic and crazy coincidences with this project as well.
SM: How has that magic manifested for you both?
GK: I was loading Cleopatra onto a van. There was a little piece of cardboard that had been ripped off a delivery box or something and we picked it up and it had Cleopatra’s face on it. There’s been quite a few things like that that have happened.
SK: Last year was sixty years since the film and there was a book just recently written in honour of it. In May of last year, in Alexandria, they think they’ve just discovered her tomb. I discovered that right before we began. That had a profound impact on me. It’s still not confirmed but it’s the closest they’ve ever come.
SM: Wow. It’s like you’re resurrecting her.
SK: I think as an artist you are tapping into something beyond the physical. You’re tapping into another time zone. There is a collective consciousness, and I think we are tapped into that in the studio all the time.
GK: It becomes a meditation because unless you’re concentrating fully on what you’re doing, you’re going to get it wrong. The worries and issues all have to be put to the side.
SM: So now I know how Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra came to be - how did you choose the other three women?
SK: It was about the images coming to us. She came to us. It wasn’t a linear choice. Then we started looking at images of icons.
GK: With Beyonce, we knew it was a completely different energy. We wanted to tap into that, something that had a punch to it, a power to it. Veronica Lake was a strange one. We wanted to do something in black and white. I was looking through an old 1930s designer book and stumbled upon the image. Wow, what a fascinating history and character she was. She was involved with the gangster mob, and the big producers back in the day. She was a great actress, but she died as an alcoholic. She made some great movies but she just…
SK: She was schizophrenic. She turned to acting to overcome her condition. Her story is quite tragic. She was kind of the first femme fatale. She went through a lot of difficulty in Hollywood, suffered a lot of abuse from men. She was so judged, so misunderstood. I felt so sad crystallizing it. Her children didn’t speak to her. What a tragic difficult journey she had. A lot of people have had very difficult journeys. So did Elizabeth Taylor.
GK: One day, a photographer took a photo of her, and just as she turned around one of her hairs fell over her eyes. All the young girls at the time thought it was fantastic and went and got their hair done just like it. She was a proper pin-up back in the day. Such an interesting character. The photograph is so beautiful. Those old black and whites have a nature of their own. It’s so hard to re-create that, to capture the softness of it. It was an incredible challenge to paint.
Veronica Lake
SK: Even the Beyonce image came to us. I am madly in love with Pucci, her designer. I saw the picture and had a physical response. When you are looking at an image, it’s not literal. You just feel it. I saw it and just knew it needed to be big, and bold, and that it needed to be in crystals. That will have an impact.
SM: What were both of your creative processes for these pieces? What did you listen to? How did you feel with each?
GK: I have to listen to Mozart when I paint. Must. It blows my head. It’s like a religious experience listening to Mozart. I can work and keep working if I’m listening to his operas.
SM: What is your favorite Mozart piece?
GK: Così fan tutte. You have to go and see the opera. The arias in it will melt your heart. I felt the energy of each of the women as I painted them. I felt magical painting Cleopatra. But painting Veronica, I felt like I was in the 30’s.
SM: Did you ever work in unison on these pieces, or always solo?
GK: Once.
SK: We’ve got a video of us working on Cleopatra together. It was so scary. I nearly walked out. It was so daunting. I’ve never done something to this scale, something this intricate. It took me about ten weeks to do each piece.
GK: God, the patience she had to have to do this. Each one, she gets a syringe, a little dot of glue, a little crystal. A lot of patience and a lot of work.
When I painted Diana, I was so aware of the story as I was working on. The whole life experience. It made me feel very sensitive about the way I painted. I needed empathy. She was a challenge because the picture we were working from was black and white but we wanted it in color. It’s been an artistic challenge.
SM: Sequin, it sounds like you went to the women themselves as you were creating. Can you share what that looked like for you?
SK: I listened to Elizabeth Taylor’s interviews, and just people talking in general. A lot of music. I listened to this podcast called The Emerald which is all kinds of deep, esoteric wisdom. I listened to people speak about Egyptology, mathematics, and quantum physics.
Beyonce
SM: Any Beyonce songs?
SK: I have to say, her cover of Jolene is my favorite. Beyonce has had to overcome a lot too, often in silence. But it’s that ability to shine through it. Her success has taken a hell of a lot sacrifice, but it’s not so seen.
Princess Diana was the last one we did. She was the most recent, and the most tragic. It brings something up in all of us. It happened in our lifetimes. She had an impact on the whole world in so many ways. There’s so much controversy around her death. It’s about having power, and not having it. It’s going to raise questions, and memories.
GK: It’s been amazing painting her, but very overwhelming at times.
SK: You listen to that Bashir interview. She was really suffering, throughout the whole time. You start to think about humanity and people and what we go through - in the spotlight and out of the spotlight.
SM: I love this metaphor that’s tracking through. In light and out of light. Both in a literal sense and what you’ve managed to capture in this work.
SK: Yes, definitely.
SM: What do you hope people feel when they look at these paintings?
SK: I want people to feel a sense of curiosity around the person they are looking it. Who are they and what is their story? I want them to feel a sense of impact and awe. And transformation. I want people to feel that.
GK: I hope people appreciate the pure aesthetic of it as well. It’s a bit like wine. If you lift up a glass of wine and have a sip, no matter how much it is or how much it costs, they either like or they don’t. I want them to like it. I want it to resonate with them.
SM: Last question: is there another project in the pipeline for both of you to come together on again?
GK: We both have so many ideas.
SM: Why don't you both tell me the next project you'd most like to work on with each other?
SK: For me it's an image of Sinead O'Connor. It's a black and white image of her with a large angel next to her.
GK: My idea has an angel too. It's this photograph of a tramp laying down in Spitafields market. He looks so wretched, you can't believe it, and there's a lamp post leaning over. It's so clever the way it's captured because it looks like the lamp post is leaning over in sympathy. I saw this picture of an angel with light coming through its wings, and I want to combine the images. I imagine this angel coming down in color and picking up this black and white tramp from the floor.
SM: Well I think it's clear that your work together has only just begun.
GK: You know, we’ve come from two totally different backgrounds. They say the twain’ shall never meet. The east and west. But we did.
SK: It’s been a mad journey, but an amazing one.
View on Instagram
You can follow the four female icons journey's on the artist's instagrams: Sequin Kay and Gerry Kinch.
