2016 has been a year where the world has lost countless iconic famous face, with David Bowie, Muhammed Ali and Alan Rickman just some of the stars who have tragically passed away. Artist Chris Barker began to pay tribute to the unusually high amount of notable deaths by creating a collage of them all together in November in a St Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover-inspired montage, and updated it in December following the sad passing of stars including George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
Chris created a collage of famous faces who have passed away this year
The montage has gone viral online, and the artist spoke about deciding to create it. In a blog post, he wrote: "What a year, I was thinking, David Bowie, Brexit and now this. A lot of people speculate that Bowie was actually the glue that was holding the universe together. It's certainly been a bit different since he tragically passed away. So I thought that since I was going to be up for hours anyway, I might do a montage that summed up how weird a year it's been. It wasn't going to be a montage of dead celebrities in the style of Sgt Peppers at first. In fact the Sgt Pepper element came quite late. Initially I was going to have Bowie in the centre and everything else orbiting around him but then I found the full length shot of Bowie that you see on the final piece and it looked so Sgt Pepper I thought I might as well go with that idea."
He then added: "I think I caught the mood of the nation. People were a bit in shock about the American election result, a lot of people were down about it and wanted to share something that reflected how they felt, but they didn’t want necessarily to share anything Trumpy… A weird day where people were awake at weird times and in an unusually interactive mood." Following Debbie Reynold's death on Wednesday, he tweeted: "#RIPDebbieReynolds Terrible sad news. I have had enough of this year now. #sgtpepper2016."
