Headlights shine on dead animals

1:13am Sunday 16th December 2007

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IT'S not every day someone asks you to put on an animal mask and play dead in the middle of a road. But if it does happen, you must know Nigel Grimmer.

The up-and-coming artist has been making this unusual request for the past few years and his friends and family are entirely used to it now.

Roadkill Family Album, Focal Point gallery, Southend Library until Saturday January 5

The thing is, Nigel isn't just any old artist. He's a photographer with an eye for the unusual and he's only looking to extend his Roadkill Family Album.

Most people may like to take happy, smiling pictures of people they know, but not Nigel. He likes to dress them up as animals and have them slumped by a roadside before he'll even consider snapping away.

Photos from the Roadkill Family Album are currently on display in Southend and, as you can imagine, the 35-year-old has been getting a lot of feedback.

You might imagine it's all along the lines of grim by name, grim by nature' but that's not the case. It's quite the opposite, in fact, and Nigel's work is gaining something of a cult following. So what's it all about?

"It's an alternate photo album," he explains. "All the pictures are of my friends and family and they were all taken at the time you'd normally take a photo, like on holiday or outside someone's new house.

"I've just changed the rules a bit. I want people to see my photos and think they're artificial, but I want them to then think their own family albums are artificial.

"Making two people stand with their arms around each other for a picture isn't natural, but we accept poses like that when it comes to photos. It's all about questioning family photography."

Nigel, who hails from Great Yarmouth, started taking pictures for the Roadkill Family Album in 2000, but didn't get round to showing them off until four years later.

Since then, Nigel has been bombarded with e-mails from people who "really like my stuff" and has even begun to hold workshops at schools and colleges, where youngsters can recreate his work.

The Southend exhibition is part of Nigel's first UK tour, which will see Roadkill travelling around the country to "get it out of London". It is also the first time all the photographs in the collection have been displayed.

"When you see the images in a gallery, they all do different things," Nigel says. "You can't look at them and say they're all morbid or sad. They're all about different people, different times, different situations and different feelings.

"I like to make my work accessible and there are one or two which everyone thinks are quite poignant. I get a lot of comments about the one called Jo, Hull, 2000, which features a fox lying by the side of the road. Because there is no blood in any of my pictures, the characters, so to speak, don't seem morbid - they just look like they've given up.

"There are some houses in the background of that particular picture and I think a lot of people can familiarise with the environment. The fox looks like a doll which nobody is playing with anymore and she's looking at the camera like she's trapped. I think a lot of people in small suburban towns know the feeling."

The photographs in the Roadkill Family Album have all been shot in different locations and take viewers on a "journey" from the country to the city. They will also be appearing in a book Nigel is currently working on, due for release next year.

When asked about how the pictures came about, Nigel "can't quite remember" why he took the first photograph with his mother.

However, he admits he's always had a healthy passion for roadkill from a young age, which probably helped.

"My work is the accepted thing in our family," Nigel reveals.

"More and more people are asking me to take their picture and a lot of my friends have children now, who are very interested in what I'm doing.

"At first, I think my family thought it was a bit odd - especially my mum - but she's accepted art is what I do and now she helps me out all the time.

"She's in loads of my work and is my bestseller. On our last couple of holidays, we only took roadkill pictures," he laughs.

Artists generally make a name for themselves by being a bit controversial and judging from his work, Nigel is doing a good job. Thanks to the exhibition, his photography is very much in demand and he has a jam-packed schedule until the end of 2008.

Luckily, he believes he could "go on forever" when it comes to the Roadkill Family Album and Nigel plans to add to the collection every few months.

If you ask me, this is just as well, because once word gets around, Nigel Grimmer is going to be huge.