Skin Deep

A gallery of Alastair Thain's photographic portraits. Gathered together, they offer an exploration of modern celebrity and myth. Perhaps the most famous of Thain's portraits is that of Andy Warhol, taken at the Factory just months before the artist's death. The image of Warhol as a death mask has a cruel retrospective irony. Other images include Thain's portrait of Jean Michel Basquiat, New York's "tribal" artist, taken shortly before the subject died of an overdose aged 27, and that of fellow artist Keith Haring, creator of art form ephemera gathered on the streets, who died of AIDS. Living artists represented here include Julian Schnabel, David Hockney, Francis Bacon and Gilbert and George. The music world also features, including portraits of Bryan Ferry, Keith Richards, Annie Lennox, Bob Geldof, David Byrne and Terence Trent D'Arby among others. With lumninaries from the worlds of literature (Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, Kathy Acker), film (Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Ridley Scott, Stephen Frears, Oliver Stone), theatre (Steven Berkoff, Anthony Hopkins, Max Wall), fashion and dance, Thain scrutinizes the image of the famous.