Jeremy Deller
Jeremy Deller
b. 1966
Jeremy Deller is a British self-taught Conceptual artist whose dissonant refusal to adhere to a single medium has established him as a great challenger of the conventions of contemporary art. Deller’s trajectory toward a career in art history changed in 1986 after spending time at Warhol’s Factory. Since then, he has used his art to engage with contemporary social and political issues as well as interrogate history. Deller consistently relies on the participation of viewers in his work, defining him as an artist who combines a lowbrow approach with an exceedingly intellectual basis to successfully engage with a wide-ranging audience.
‘I think every time you do something, you’re trying to push what art is, and what it can do a little bit further ahead’, said Jeremy Deller, the self-taught Conceptual artist who cannot be pinned down by medium. Instead described by critics as an instigator of social intervention, Deller is lauded for his focus on collaborative artmaking to produce undeniably powerful works. An artist with a great interest in history, Deller harnesses his art as a space to interrogate the past and interact with the present.
Born in 1966 in London, Deller received his BA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute and his MA from the University of Sussex. His trajectory toward a career in art history changed in 1986 when he encountered Andy Warhol who invited him to spend two weeks at The Factory in New York. The experience inspired Deller to become an artist, having realised ‘you could make art out of whatever you were interested in’.
In earnest, Deller began his art practice in the early 1990s, launching an exhibition in 1993 titled ‘Open Bedroom’, a response to the open studios art students were having. Without a studio of his own, the exhibition of his small-scale works, which he claimed ‘would have looked ridiculous in an art gallery’, was held in his childhood home while his parents were away.
In 1997, Deller began toying with the interaction between art and music, an interest that persists across his career. Born out of his intricate diagram ‘History of the World’ which attempts to reconcile the social, political and musical connections between house music and brass bands was ‘Acid Brass’, a brass band performance of acid house music.
Still, Deller is perhaps best known for his work on political and social issues such as Brexit and the immigrant crisis. A hallmark of his work is his constant return to historic events and archives with perhaps the best example of this being ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001). Working with former miners and members of re-enactment societies he produced a restaging of the eponymous violent confrontation between police and striking miners in 1984. Bringing the past starkly into the present, Deller referred to the work as ‘a public inquiry through art’.
Though Deller continues to work across media, his art is largely ephemeral in nature and exists outside the space of the gallery; often his performances only physically survive today through film documentation or preparatory sketches. Yet, exceptions do exist, including his extensive production of posters as well as ‘Iggy Pop Life Class’ (2016). Using the rock icon as its model, this life drawing class held at the New York Academy of Art consisted of 21 artists from all walks of life. The drawings the artists produced are not only relics of the performance but works which, when displayed together, demonstrate the sheer variety of interpretations of the human body.
Refusing to adhere by what he perceives as antiquated notions of the separation of the viewer from art, Deller crucially encourages and even relies on the physical interaction of and conversation with viewers in his work. Deller stands as a uniquely irreverent artist whose lowbrow approach, yet exceedingly intellectual basis continues to allow him to successfully engage with a wide-ranging audience.
