Chris Killip, retrospective

Fri 07 Oct 2022 - Sun 19 Feb 2023

Black and white photograph of a girl playing with a hula-hoop, against a deindustrialized landscape

Chris Killip, retrospective

Fri 07 Oct 2022 - Sun 19 Feb 2023

This event is part of our Past Programme

Teaser video of Chris Killip, retrospective exhibition

Chris Killip's continued efforts to value and document the lives of those affected by the economic shifts in the North of England, throughout the 1970s and 80s, have made him one of the most influential figures of British Photography. 

This retrospective exhibition of more than 140 works, serves as the most comprehensive survey of the photographer's work to date and includes previously unseen works.

An interview with curators Tracey Marshall-Grant and Ken Grant.

His stark but sympathetic observation focused attention on issues and communities often neglected or hidden.

- BBC News
Black and white photograph of a male punk, dancing

His sustained immersion into the communities he photographed remains without parallel. Whilst marking a moment of deindustrialisation, Killip's stark yet tender observation moves beyond the urgency to record such circumstances, to affirm the value of lives he grew close to - lives that, as he once described 'had history done to them', who felt history's malicious disregard and yet, like the photographer himself, refused to yield or look away. 

Against a background of shipbuilding and coal mining, he witnessed the togetherness of communities and the industries that sustained them and stayed long enough to see their loss. 

Chris Killip, retrospective is co-curated by Tracy Marshall Grant and Ken Grant. With thanks to the Martin Parr Foundation and Chris Killip Photography Trust.

This exhibition is supported by the Isle of Man Arts Council and Culture Vannin.

The galleries are very busy at the weekend, so to avoid disappointment we recommend you book online before you come along or that you visit in the mornings.

Buy the exhibition book here

By exhibition curators, Ken Grant and Tracy Grant, published by Thames & Hudson, and designed by Niall Sweeney

Order now