Jeremy Deller’s exhibition, ‘Local Artist’ demonstrates the artist’s talent for observing, collecting and curating the everyday activities of ordinary people, and presenting them in such a way that we see them from a fresh perspective.

The work in the exhibition could be seen as an attempt to document popular culture and expression, ranging from the music of a steel drum band to street protests, historical reenactments, and popular festivals.

Like all of Deller’s best know work, these pieces were part of his ongoing project unpicking the strands which form popular culture: The much imitated work Acid Brass, began in 1997 as a collaboration between Deller and the Stockport-based Fairey Brass Band. Deller saw a connection between the two apparently disparate genres, viewing them as ‘two authentic forms of folk art rooted in specific communities.’

His piece The Battle of Orgreave was a reenactment of the confrontation between police and picketing miners in Orgreave, South Yorkshire, in 1984. The reenactment featured local residents, a number of people (police and picketers) from the original encounter and experienced battle re-enactors. Like the restaging of the Bloody Sunday marches in Derry for recent films, the restaging of this recent historical event asks us to review and question our own memories. It provides an opportunity to dispute biased newspaper and television reports of the time, and becomes part of the history of the event; an epilogue to the event itself.

 

Jeremy Deller Biography

Jeremy Deller is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller’s work is collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the devaluation of artistic ego through the involvement of other people in the creative process. He won the Turner Prize in 2004.

Acknowledgements

Void Gallery is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Derry City Council.