Achtung 74

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It’s 1974, and 16-year-old Ian McKay has just left secondary school. His adolescent world is brimming with music, football, fashion, and the stirrings of romantic intrigue.

In Achtung 74, McKay reflects on the vibrant yet uncertain days of his youth in East Manchester, contrasting them with the unseen lives of his peers behind the wall in East Berlin. He imagines a pen-pal romance between a British lad and an East German girl, exchanging the everyday details of their vastly different lives alongside their shared hopes for the future.

Through this imagined correspondence, McKay weaves together memory and imagination, drawing parallels between the familiar and the foreign. Using a mix of colours, archive imagery, currency, postage stamps, and his fondness for the nearby circus, McKay explores this fractured divide. Each work in the series takes its title from a hit single of 1974, amplifying the spirit of the era.

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