Christopher Killip (British, 1946). Leso and Gun, Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, 1980. Gelatin silver print, printed c. ...

Description

Christopher Killip (British, 1946)
Leso and Gun, Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, 1980
Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1980. Signed and titled in pencil, verso.
image: 9 x 12 inches (22.9 x 30.5 cm)
sheet: 12 x 16 inches

PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the artist.

LITERATURE:
G. Badger, Chris Killip, London, Phaidon 55, 2001, np.

"Skinningrove is a small, unlovely village between the Tees conurbation and the 'model' port of Whitby to the south. Skinningrove does not draw coach parties of tourists like Whitby, but Whitby does not draw Killip. Now increasingly hemmed in by gentrification and the idealizing of the coastline in the interest of holiday homes, Skinningrove remains defiantly working class -- like a 'sink estate' [problematic public housing] among fishing communities. 'Skinningrove' say knowing locals 'is where they eat their babies.' And Killip's whole sequence [of pictures there], indeed suggests that Skinningrove is a place on the edge, hence Killip's attraction to it. The gun is used by the 'Grovers' to threaten outsiders who stray onto 'their' fishing grounds."
(Badger, ibid.)

Leso and Gun is the first of a number of important photographs by Chris Killip in this sale. They were all taken in the north of England in the 1980s, during the so-called "Thatcher Years" (when Margaret Thatcher was Britain's Prime Minister), which witnessed a steep rise in unemployment and decline in the fortunes of the British working class. Following a number of deep cuts to the economy, former areas of heavy industry, already on their last legs thanks to more competitive foreign competition, crumbled into dust. The country was polarized, with the "haves" largely based in the south of England and the "have nots" in its more northern manufacturing regions, forced unwillingly to accept a new, much chillier economic reality. Killip's Skinningrove and Seacoal series are a hauntingly beautiful, often poignant testament to this bitter working class struggle.

In 1985, Killip held a joint exhibition at London's Serpentine Gallery with his colleague and close friend Graham Smith, whose work is also represented in this sale. The show, Another Country, was well-received, although some critics accused the photographers of being old-fashioned and even clichéd in their "stereotypical" depictions of unsophisticated northerners. The collaboration worked well, however, because the sensibilities of the two men are quite different, despite the similarity in their subject matter; Killip's vision is largely darker and more pessimistic, while Smith's more upbeat and pragmatic.


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