Invited Artists



Pawel_Althamer | Michael_Asher | Nairy_Baghramian | Guy_Ben-Ner | Guillaume_Bijl | Martin_Boyce | Jeremy Deller | Michael_Elmgreen und Ingar_Dragset | Hans-Peter_Feldmann | Dora_Garcia | Isa_Genzken | Dominique_Gonzalez-Foerster | Tue_Greenfort | David_Hammons | Valérie_Jouve | Mike_Kelley | Suchan Kinoshita | Marko_Lehanka | Gustav_Metzger | Eva_Meyer und Eran_Schaerf | Deimantas_Narkevicius | Bruce_Nauman | Maria_Pask | Manfred_Pernice | Susan_Philipsz | Martha_Rosler | Thomas_Schütte | Andreas_Siekmann | Rosemarie_Trockel | Silke_Wagner | Mark_Wallinger | Clemens von Wedemeyer | Annette_Wehrmann | Pae_White

 


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Jeremy Deller

* 1966, London, lives and works in London



Project: Speak to the Earth and it will tell you

Jeremy Deller focuses on the ego and its interests. When shared by several people interests tend to be organized: in associations, unions, political parties, or perhaps even in amateur acting groups or allotment garden associations. Jeremy Deller does not paint pictures, he stages them. For example he invited re-enactment heroes to re-enact historically correct the bloody battles during the violent miners’ strikes in England which he then captures on video. His success as an artist is always at the same time the success of the people he works with. In Münster he took notice of the phenomenon of the allotment garden associations which must seem rather “German” to a British person. In his project for skulptur projekte münster 07, Deller not only concerns himself with the history of allotment gardens, but also with all the stories told by their owners: he will distribute a large-format, leather-bound book to each of the fifty-four allotment garden associations in Münster asking their members to use them as a diary over a period of ten years. Deller’s interest in people and in various forms of communal life allows the spectator easy access to his work. For visitors to this year’s exhibition, Deller also has a souvenir: a little packet, designed by him, containing the seeds of a dove tree. The visitors are invited to sow them when they get home and wait for the next issue of Skulptur Projekte in the year 2017 – for it will take that long before the dove tree, a leaved tree with white blossoms native to China, is in full bloom.


Biography

Since the mid-1990s, Jeremy Deller has been a mediator, curator, director, and publisher. As such, he has initiated a number of art projects and co-operations, which have enabled him to handle historical, social, and geographical themes in his authentic way. Deller is particularly interested in activities at the margins of the mainstream. His works focus on the history and cultural identity of the UK in the late 1980s. Through the re-contextualisation of recent history, Deller creates new perspectives, from which to re-view entrenched perceptions. He uses journalistic and cultural research methods, investigating, interviewing, and analysing. Deller's artistic practice, the performing and participating approach, used in his projects, place this artist's work in the public sphere. Through subversive intervention, e.g. pamphlets, signs, and posters, the manipulation of events, staged demonstrations, varying cultural traditions, different social groups are brought together in accordance with their respective logic. "The Battle of Orgreave", produced in 2001, won Deller international acclaim. "The Battle" is based on the legendary miners' strike of 1984/85, which, in the end, became a power struggle between trade unions and the British government. Jeremy Deller had former miners and amateurs re-enact the key event of Thatcherism, thereby, using a very popular English method – the re-enactment of historical events. In 2004, the artist received the prestigious Turner Prize for "Memory Bucket". This filmed diary is a documentary on Deller's trip through Texas. Beginning in Waco – where, in 1993, more than 80 members of the Davidians sect, declared "terrorists," were killed, following weeks of a police siege, under still unclear circumstances – he continued on to Crawford, the home of US President George W. Bush.

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