#Lamentation

The scene is the aftermath of a car accident at an intersection near a retail park. Tim lies dead in the arms of a stranger. His glamourous second wife stands stunned and bloodstained amidst the wreckage of his Ferrari. To the right, paramedics prepare to remove his body. To the left, police and firemen record and clear the crash scene. Onlookers take photos with their camera phones to upload to the internet. His dog lays dead. The contents of his wife’s expensive handbag spill out over a copy of Hello magazine that features her and Tim on the cover. At the bottom of Rogier van der Weyden’s Lamentation (c. 1460), the painting that inspired this image, is a skull; I have substituted it with a smashed smartphone, which refers back to the first tapestry in the series, where Tim reaches for his mother's phone. This scene also echoes the final painting of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1733), where Tom Rakewell dies naked in The Madhouse.

Text courtesy of the artist.