Double trouble for the Jackson Twins
Apr 16 2010 By Lorne Jackson
Lorne Jackson finds nothing is as it seems in the strange reality of photographic artists The Jackson Twins.
Meeting the Jackson Twins for the first time is a bit of a shocker.
For a start, neither of them look particularly evil, though I’m sure one of them has to be. Secondly, before they walk into the Rhubarb East Gallery in Digbeth, I am expecting a couple of giraffe-limbed lovelies, caked in make-up and slinky as supermodels. A buff-blonde blend of vixen and vamp.
Instead, I’m confronted by two short, fresh-faced, preppy looking twins in casual wear.
Oh, and they aren’t females, either.
The Jackson Twins are Karl and Ian, two brothers who work in the medium of photography, though you could argue that their real medium is make belief.
Karl and Ian are fantasists, fibbers and arch-fabricators.
Together they create photographs that are as close to reality as John O’Groats is to Land’s End.
The images they produce are dark and creepy. Goosebump Gothic.
A devoted young couple wouldn’t want the twins taking their wedding snaps. Though they would be the perfect photographers for commemorating the nuptials of Morticia and Gomez Addams.
In many of the Jackson photographs, the twins – who appear in all their pictures, to the exclusion of anyone else – dress as glamorous women. Which explains my surprise on meeting them.
Evil is also a motif. In each photograph, one of the brothers assumes the role of the evil twin.
Sometimes it’s hard for the viewer to know which twin is playing the bad guy or girly. Though other times it’s easy. For instance, the photo where one twin, brandishing a pair of scissors, is on the point of pouncing on the other. (Though admittedly the other twin also grasps scissors. There are no true innocents in Jackson World.)
Not all of the most striking images have the twins dressed as women.
One memorable lightning flash of high drama has them appearing as bald-headed beings (human doesn’t seem to be the word I want to use, here) grinning malevolently, though holding cups of tea like genteel English gents, pinkies politely raised.
The Jackson Twins work will appeal to anyone who admires Lady Gaga, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and classic Hammer Horror movies.
I’m certainly a fan, though even I’m at a loss to explain what it all means.
Karl gamely attempts an explanation: “The work is based around two bits of research we did,” he says. “One of them being psychology. But the main one was a mixture of looking at folklore and fairy tales.”
