Two years ago, the young artist Rene Matić had the far-right slogan “Born British Die British” tattooed on their back. The words unfurl in a delicate font across their rippling shoulders in the elegiac black-and-white portrait they then commissioned from one of their heroes: the celebrated street photographer Derek Ridgers. His early work with 1970s and 80s skinheads captured a burly tribal energy often fuelled by extremist views. Inked on a Black lesbian body, the phrase becomes a lot more than a war cry for embattled white men. “[The tattoo] was always about the in-between moments of being born British and dying British,” Matić says. “That’s what my story is all about.”
For the artist, skinhead culture’s roots, when white and British Jamaican kids danced side by side to ska and reggae, and the movement’s later infamous tilt to the far right, make it “the perfect metaphor for talking about West Indian and white working-class culture – my culture”. Skinhead insignia is a leitmotif throughout Upon This Rock, the 25-year-old’s first big solo show of their film, photography and sculpture, at the South London Gallery. So, too, are crosses and flags, the major emblems of nationhood and church.
