Simeon Barclay
About this work
"Film, television, and celebrity culture are paramount in this conversation. A good example of this is his work Royal Flush (2017), which replays a scene from Alan Bleasdale’s brilliant 1982 television series Boys from the Blackstuff in which Yosser Hughes meets Graeme Sou-ness. A hard-as-nails, no-nonsense Liverpool FC captain, Souness is the idol of the fictional Hughes, who has recently lost his wife, his job, and his sense of identity. Barclay is interest- ed in the strange collision of fact and fiction in this scene. While he plays himself, the role Souness adopts in the film is nonetheless an identity of stereotypical white working class masculinity that most likely bears little relation to the more complex off-field, off-camera identity of Souness himself. In a double diptych, Barclay has them gazing at each other across images of ‘English Rose’ actresses Jane Seymour and an Under the Cherry Moon era Kristin Scott-Thomas. It’s a double-date scenario in which idealized, gendered, fantasy ‘versions’ of each character are mirrored and refracted endlessly in the eyes of the other." Francis Loeffler, Cura, 2017.
