Chris Killip & Graham Smith: “Another Country” (1985)
Helen and Hula-Hoop, Seacoal Beach, Lynemouth, Tyneside, UK, 1984 by Chris Killip
His affection for the land and its people never blinded him to the toughness of ordinary existence.
By Richard Cork, Review of Another Country at Serpentine Galler
The unease is so pervasive in Killip’s work that his one scene of full-blooded enjoyment also turns out to be the most sinister in in implications. Concert, Sunderland is the terse title for an extraordinary image, where the flashlight illuminates a tangle of semi-naked figures presumably swaying to the music. One shaven-headed dancer, his ear pierced with a variety of rinp and pins, lurches to the left and bunches his hand into a fist. Another figure, stripped to the waist and baring the word ‘Angelic’ under his nipple, dives towards his neighbours like a rugby player barging into a scrum