ARTEXT : La Biennale di Venezia
55 Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte
Giardini di Castello - Gran Bretagna 

JEREMY DELLER
Jeremy Deller

The exhibition reflects the roots of much of Deller's work, focusing on British society - its people, icons, myths, folklore and its cultural and political history. He weaves together high and low, popular and rarefied to create unique and thought provoking work.

English Magic addresses events from the past, present and an imagined future. Deller frames these instances in a way that is contemporary but also true to the original subject, weaving a narrative that is almost psychedelic; hovering delicately between fact and fiction, real and imagined.

Four years later he produced the musical performance Acid Brass with the Williams-Fairey Band and began making art in collaboration with other people. In 2000, with fellow artist Alan Kane, Deller began a collection of items that illustrate the passions and pastimes of people from across Britain and the social classes. Treading a fine line between art and anthropology, Folk Archive is a collection of objects which touch on diverse subjects such as morris dancing, gurning competitions and political demonstrations. The Folk Archive became part of the British Council Collection in 2007 and has since toured to Shanghai, Paris and Milan.

In 2001 Deller staged The Battle of Orgreave, commissioned by Artangel and Channel 4, directed by Mike Figgis. The work involved a re-enactment which brought together around 1000 veteran miners and members of historical societies to restage the 1984 clash between miners and police in Orgreave, Yorkshire. In 2004, Deller won the Turner Prize for Memory Bucket (2003), a documentary about Texas. He has since made a number of documentaries on subjects ranging from the exotic wrestler Adrian Street to the die-hard international fan base of the band Depeche Mode.

In 2009 Deller undertook a road trip across the US, from New York to Los Angeles, towing a car destroyed in a bomb attack in Baghdad and accompanied by an Iraqi citizen and a US war veteran. The project, It Is What It Is, was presented at Creative Time and the New Museum, New York and the car is now part of the Imperial War Museum's Collection.

- Laura Hoptman: What is Is It What It Is?
- Jeremy Deller: The show at the New Museum will be a series of people being present in the gallery and available for discussion and conversation, and all these people have a very specific view or experience of Iraq be it from an academic standpoint or a practical standpoint. Also other objects will be present, such as drawings and a car that was destroyed in an attack on a street market. Then part of the show goes on the road, literally. Myself, Nato, and our two guests Jonathan Harvey and Esam Pasha will travel through the southern states of America. And the bombed car will be in tow. Jonathan is a recently demobilized Platoon Sargeant in the US military, and Esam is an artist and was a translator for American and British forces in Iraq.

- Nato Thompson: A lot of your work has dealt with very particular groups or subcultures. And It Is What It Is is about a particular group of people. Is it for a particular group of people?
- JD: It's for everybody. And when it goes on the road, it really is for everybody literally. We're actually going to take it to them.

- NT: Jeremy, you've talked about the project being post-activist, insomuch as you don't want it to be pro- or anti-war.
- JD: It is about the war, in the same way that a war museum is about war. But a great war museum is one that's neutral. As much as possible, we're just presenting information. But the project is also about everything that surrounds the war, before and after. The people participating in the project are those who have experience, rather than opinions. Often, the people that have the strongest opinions are the ones who have no experience.

In 2009 Deller staged Procession, in Manchester, involving participants, commissioned floats, choreographed music and performances creating an odd and celebratory spectacle. During the summer of 2012 Sacrilege, Deller's life-size inflatable version of Stonehenge a co-commission between Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and the Mayor of London - toured around the UK to great public acclaim.

Curatori : Emma Gifford-Mead
Artisti : Jeremy Deller

Web site :http://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/