Celebrity

Chris Barker’s Sgt Pepper round-up of the celebrities we’ve lost in 2022 is a real gut-wrencher

Poke Staff. Updated December 2nd, 2022

As the end of the year approaches, we’ve come to experience a combined sense of anticipation and dread, as we wait for artist, illustrator and art director Chris Barker to release his Sgt Pepper-style tribute to the public figures who have died during the year.

So – this is the role-call of those we’ve lost in 2022. Get ready for some utter gut punches.

As always, he included a key.

We spoke to Chris about the moving tradition.

“I’ve been doing this since 2016. That was the year anyone who was nice or kind or creative or special decided it was time to leave before the bad stuff started.”

He added –

“I still try and keep the star’s dignity and think of their loved ones and how it would make them feel to see it.”

“This year, I had to put all the previous ones side by side …and it really hit me how many great people we’ve lost forever. It’s a real sea of amazing talents laid out in front of your eyes. Musicians, actors, comedians… all of whom provided a little bit of light in the darkness.”

“There is something very levelling about the montage. The fact that Jean-Luc Godard, Coolio, Vangelis and Gorbachev can just be in a little cluster together in the middle. Just normal men. Innocent men.”

These are just a few comments the post has attracted since going out on Twitter.

Chris summed up his Sgt Pepper pictures perfectly.

“I’m like the Spotify Wrapped that nobody wants to be a part of…”

If that’s just too much melancholy for a cold December day, you can always give your spirits a lift by buying the book or calendar of Chris’s viral thread of iconic UK light entertainment expertly mashed up with fine art.

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This brilliantly reimagined Sgt Pepper cover remembers the famous faces who died in 2021

Source Chris Barker Image Chris Barker