MM take a trip down the East Lancs Road to visit the latest exhibition at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery… photographer Rankin.
Death. Like a visit to Goodison Park, none of us really want to go; but it will happen eventually.
Rankin has spent his career photographing the famous and glamorous in shades of high gloss. Here he takes a look at our own mortality. There are some errors along the way, but in the main it takes an unpalatable fact of life and turns it into something truly moving.
He applies his aesthetic in the first section, which is portraits of people who have survived near death experiences; glossed up, full on, in full colour washes. Stunning to look at, the captions reveal the joy of being alive.
Most effective here is the portrait of Johnson Beharry, who almost died twice in Iraq. Later on he reappears in a triptych, his George Cross tattooed across his back and shoulders. Strength in the face of death personified.
From here on in, the exhibition puts a wrong foot in the grave. The portraits of people in what one can only describe as ‘the death industry’ (pathologists, gravediggers, a couple who use the ashes of the dead as tattoos) are interesting enough.
Now we have death masks of the famous, ranging from people I genuinely like (Jarvis Cocker), to people I’m fairly neutral about (Joanna Lumley) to people I couldn’t give a toss about (Holly Willoughby).
Now, I get the points he is making here. However, this section doesn’t have the emotional depth of the previous two. Eerie as they seem, hung like souls in purgatory, it’s a typically unnecessary YBA gimmick.
Thankfully, it regains it’s mojo from this point, with portraits of the terminally ill. This, dear reader is where you will need a hanky, or claim to have something in your throat.
The triptych trick is repeated here, a woman with cancer; bewigged on either side, bald from chemo in the centre. The old man with Emphysema, dressed like Fred Astaire. The woman with cancer, with the impish smile and style of Boudicca.
A genuinely moving, but flawed exhibition, under the gloss and superficiality lie true heart and emotion.
Image courtesy of themacallanthemalt via YouTube, with thanks.
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