Preview: Joker Face, Assembly Roxy

KATHY Burke breaks the mould. Funny and self-
depricating, vanity has never been one of her vices, as visitors to Joker Face, a new exhibition by photographer Ray
Burmiston, will discover.

Over the last ten years, Ray has photographed almost every major UK comedy star from Alan Carr to Jenny Eclair.

Comedy royalty hang beside rising stars in the exhibition, which opens today at the Snug Bar of Assembly Roxy, formerly Lady Glenorchy’s Church, on the corner of Roxburgh Place and Drummond Street.

“I’m so excited about having this show in Edinburgh,” says Ray. “Over the years my pictures have been on loads and loads of Festival posters but this is the first time I have been here myself.”

As for that iconic shot of Burke, he explains, “I’d known Kathy since I was a teenager. 
“For the shoot she deliberately had hairy moles on her face and said, ‘Make sure you don’t get rid of these. Don’t Photoshop the mole with the hair or the hairy moustache.’

“She was happy to look the part of a fat nun and played it perfectly.”

Michael John Harris of Assembly Festival, who programmed the exhibition adds, “Ray is one our most 
exciting contemporary portrait 
photographers, shooting everyone from Ricky Gervais to Dizzie Rascal via U2 in a cupboard.

“After a year of working on this we are delighted to 
be hosting his first ever full exhibition,”

Joker Face runs until August 27.