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Walker Art Gallery Announces The Living and the Dead Paintings and sculpture by John Kirby

The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool presents The Living and the Dead Paintings and sculpture by John Kirby, the first retrospective of work by the Liverpool born artist John Kirby, on view from 13 January until 15 April 2012.

The Living and the Dead: Paintings and sculpture by John Kirby explores the themes of gender, religion, sexuality and race and Kirby’s complex relationship with each of them.

Comprising over 50 paintings and 10 sculptures The Living and the Dead: Paintings and sculpture by John Kirby brings together a group of work spanning over three decades, from early paintings made at the Royal College of Art in the 1980s to more recent works.

Highlights in the exhibition include Lost Boys (1991), an image of fighting altar boys that references Kirby’s Catholic upbringing and is one of the artist’s favourite paintings and White Wedding, (2006), depicting a civil partnership. The sculptures in the exhibition are a more recent development in his artistic practice but also a continuation of it, with his ceramic sculptures of heads and figures bearing a striking similarity to the figures found in his paintings.

Solitary figures in strange worlds dominate Kirby’s work; this has led many people to compare his work to that of Réne Magritte. However Kirby cites the Polish-French Modern artist Balthus and American realist painter Edward Hopper as his major influences. The claustrophobic interiors charged with an uncomfortable eroticism seen in Balthus’ paintings, and statements about the human condition in Hopper’s, are themes that also underpin Kirby’s work. – www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk

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