Jeremy Deller: Middle Class Hero - A Culture Show Special The Culture Show

Jeremy Deller? A short bloke, from Dulwich, who went to public school

and likes jumble sales. I am about twice the size of him in terms of

mass. If you put me in a microwave, Jeremy Deller would come out.

wouldn't think he was anything special. You wound say that is

Jeremy Deller. Sometimes he looks like a camp tramp. He is my

unconventional son. Jeremy Deller is the artist who more than anyone

else in his generation has changed the way we think about art. I am

not sure what his art is. Perhaps somebody can tell me. He doesn't

make you know, arty objects and sticks them in a gallery. That is

not what he does. He is a funny little guy on a bike. I am Jeremy

Deller. The funny little guy on the bike. But I'm an artist, and behind

me is the Hague Hague where I am going to have a really big show. --

First bike I had would have had stabilisers, I was young, I wasn't

a teenager or anything but it was like a kiddies' bike, with thick

wheels and stabilisers. More or less I have cycled. Used to cycle

the school and after that, I used, it was a convenient way of getting

round London. Wow! You all right? am fine. What happened? It totally

skidded. I have made work round cycling or bike, one is a series of

photographs of signs saying you can't park your bike here or chain

it to these railings. It is called the war on terror because the bike

is a good thing and it should be allowed to be put anywhere I think.

The best thing about cycling is you can go anywhere on a bike. You have

an amazing freedom. You can even go to Texas!

# My golden jet is airborne # Flight 50 scuts a path across the

morning sky # And a voice comes on the speaker

# Reassuring us flight 50 I am in west Texas, in the Hill

Country, in the Frio caves waiting for an exodus of bats at sunset,

when maybe up to 10 million bats are going to leave the cave. We

will film them in 3-D and the film will be in the Hayward Gallery in

the Hayward show, it will be the last room of the show. It will be a

3-D viewing space. It will be the climax of the show. It nearly

killed us because we nearly got struck by lightening, a huge

electrical storm came. It was very close to us. It was quite scary I

thought. Much more scary han the To witness it in the flesh, as it

were, it is overwhelming, and awe inspiring. It is like a romantic

painting. It is more romantic than gothic, but bats have a gothic

image. But it fits in with romantic art, to be in awe of nature and

slightly scared of it, and it being untameable. I am very interested in

bats. I like the way they live together in large groups, the fact

they are so resolved. They can fly, they can do things we can't as

mammals, so I want to communicate some of that in the film so that is

why 3-D seemed to work. That is an over the top way of filming, and

the audio will be very important. So I have been recording them with

a bat detector which tunes into the freak says that are using to

communicate and to hunt. This looks good on a screen. How it would look

in a pro jebg for I have no idea. It is incredibly dramatic. I just

got kiss in my eye. Tonight, it could have been better, because it

was quite dark and I just think it could, you know, in different

lighting could have been even more dramatic. But I have the option to

stay another night. They are talking to me really. They are

saying "Stay here. It will be better tomorrow. "we will have a

I couldn't get the camera quite high enough yesterday, to film the

bats, so I am improvising today, with a new invention, which is

going to be a platform on one tripod and we will put another

tripod on the platform so it's a double-tripod effect. I think

artists do often end up having to improvise a lot. I don't think that

is uncrucial. -- unusual. This is par for the course for a lot of

people. Usually they are better at it than I am. Most artists are very

gifted technically, and can do amazing things. With their hands

and so on. I have never been that This is the stressful bit as you

wait. Just like before you go on stage. Your 20 minute call or 15

Some of my earliest memories are of watching nature documentaries. When

they good they are almost like works of art. So, you know, you can

look at any Sir David Attenborough film, he is on the verge of being

an artist, I would say. The skill is in making the expense of the

film as intense as the experience I've had, coming here. Because you

will be in a dark room, which is almost like being in a cavement

watching this thing happen to you. Basically happening at you. It is

an amazing experience. It is fantastic. I am an artist but not

in a conventional way. I don't draw or paint or sculpt or make a mess

in a way a lot of artists do I am not very good at technical things

either. So I have to keep to my strengths and what I am good at is

collaborating with people and organising events and working with

musician and groups of people. These are things that usually

happen outside Art Gallery, so the idea o of a retrospective in a

gallery is odd, if you think about it. Especially as I had an um

promising start to my art career. He never was annal artist.

Although during his school life he did make the odd model. There was a

locust. For science. It was a superb model but a locust is about

six inch, this thing was about 18 inches. It had to go carefully on

the back of his bike to school. got kicked, I didn't get kicked out,

I got moved out of an art class early on at the age of 12 or 13.

And sent to the pottery class, which was the remedial class basic

obey si sickly. I think I made a Womble. I think he was banned from

the art room. The art master who was very nice, he said you have no

talent in this direction at draw organise whatever. Try something

else. Because I wasn't allowed to do art I thought art history was

the closest thing. I taught Jeremy in a little class, about four or

five boys and I think he liked being out of the way as far as the

school went. To do this was heaven, really. Because you were wandering

round an Art Gallery talking about paintings. So that made me think I

would like to do this and see what happens. That is why I went to the

Courtauld. In the first year, at the end of the first year, it was

where I met Andy Warhol. That was an important moment. Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol. The reason I am telling this story is because it

had an influence on me. It wasn't just boasting, even though it is

boastful. He had a show in London, at the Anthony d'Offay gallery I

thought I'm going go to that and try and meet him and get my picture

taken with him. I turned up at the opening quite early, dressed almost

as a schoolboy, and he arrived. And he sat behind a big table. Even ran

to the table. He got a pen out and started signing stuff. After that I

was standing round, and one of his guys came up to me, and started

chatting to me saying "You should come and see us, come over to the

hotel." And I thought is this dodgy or not? I can't work it out. But

I'm going to do it. He said they were staying at the Ritz. I took a

friend Chris, I thought I needed back up. I don't know what I'm

letting myself in for with this situation. We got to the Ritz, we

stood outside the door and we were thinking what is on the other side

of that door? What are we letting ourselves in for? I think we got

the giggles, so we knocked. The door opened and there, there is

Warhol with like four or five other guy, sitting round. Watching the

Benny Hill Show, with the sound down and listening to Roxy Music

And we just spent a couple of hours there, we just, he started taking

pictures of us. We had hats and stuff in our bag. We started

putting the hats on. And just, mucking about. It was innocent fun.

Quite incredibly. Apart from one point he kind of groped me. I just

thought "Oh God, that's amazing. Thank you." Then he invited us to

New York to go to the Factory to, hang round there. That summer. He

worked with musicians, made film, did publishing, did performances

and you think this is what it is like. This is what it should be

like to be an artist. You can do whatever you want. He did what he

wanted to do. I just felt, this is what I want to do. I was living at

home with my parents. I just started making things. You will

walk in and find yourself in Jeremy Deller's bedroom. The place he live

until he was about 31. Where he had his first public art exhibition.

was too old to be living at school. His parents went on holiday he

decide rad ther than have a party, he would have an exhibition. The

first thing you would have seen was a series of photographs of Bez,

frame grabs from the Step On video, of him looking at the camera and

just doing something like this, some movement. He looked like he

was flying. That was up the wall. This is where the graffiti from the

British Library toilets was. We used to visit the British Library.

You could read the graffiti in the toilets that was amazing. Some of

the funniest things I have read. I wrote it on to A4 sheets and tacked

it up in the toilet. I made paint information the bedroom about the

life of Keith Moon. It went from his birth, really, childhood to his

resurrection effectively, including his death. That was the core of the

show. That was the first paintings I did properly. To be honest about

the last ones I did as well. Then, in the living room, this is, these

are my parents, they weren't in the living room. Where the mirror s

there was a photograph of taken at a party of a young lady. No nudity!

Promise. Then on the mantelpiece, there were lots of little calling

cards I had made. They were invitations from football hooligan

crews to go to a match and have a fight. They were worded in a

Tatleresque way on lovely cards I didn't invite me people because I

didn't know what would happen if they came. Trash the house but of

We had an opening on a Sunday afternoon and served gin-and-tonic

in the dining room which is now the kitchen. Crisps and stuff. We just

let them roam around the house. It was all very sedate, very pleasant.

You would have liked it. You should have been there. Had we known about

it, yes. You found out in your own Open Bedroom maybe proved I wasn't

going to make as a painter but that didn't really bother me because I

was interested in other things at that time. I was just mucking about

really. Mucking about in culture. Making mischief, if you like. I

also didn't have a career to speak of. I wasn't really thinking of one.

I was working in a clothes shop so I made some T-shirts and bumper

stickers to sell there, fake posters, notices on notice boards.

Things like that. Things that were very cheap and easy to make. What I

loved about all of this is you lost control of it. In the end, this was

around the time of the whole YBA seen. The whole YBA thing was

really based around a traditional form, even if the work itself

wasn't that additional. The forms themselves were very traditional.

Paintings and sculpture. And I think myself and some other friends

we saw that very quickly. We wanted to do something that cannot be

bought or sold easily or put over a mantelpiece. So we looked elsewhere

Perhaps the first resolved thing I think we did, was a show we did

with Peter Stringfellow, which was really good fun. I had a friend who

was working for Peter and we were there at an event and it occurred

to us that it would be really great if we made a three-man

collaborative work with Peter. explained to him about contemporary

art and what it meant to us. Art was not just about painting, but

performance, installation. It was about creating an environment and

he totally got it, because he saw his life as a 45-year performance,

basically, with women thrown in. So we spent a day with him. We had our

pictures taken with him in different scenarios. I thought we

were going to go in the club and take the usual photographs. Oh no,

we went into Hyde Park, the Serpentine. Like this? Yeah. We

will have photographs there? On a boat. A boat? By now, I'm having a

ball. It's hilarious. They're taking photographs. And what's

happening now? No, this is it. This is it. What we're doing is art.

It's fabulous. Here we go. I'm art. I wanted to feed the ducks and they

said, what a good idea. We had no bread. We started looking through a

bin. This is great art, he says. Us looking through a bin to feed the

We had an opening which was quite chaotic because it seemed that

everyone in the art world came because at last they had a reason

or an excuse to go to Stringfellows. Whether they saw the work or not

didn't matter. The work was behind velvet curtains hung up on the

On the evening itself, we made some chat-up lines that you could give

out. You got a free chat-up line with a bottle of beer. You would

give those out to people rather than embarrass yourself saying

awkward lines. You can give someone a card that said things like,

"Didn't I used to go out with you?" Or "Could you buy me a drink?"

which was Jeremy's favourite line. We did our own Becks beer bottle.

They worked with artists at the I think most people were slightly

miffed we weren't more judgmental and slightly more pointedly

undermining Peter in some way. In fact, we were sort of celebrating.

I did eventually grasp what he meant by creating art. Not drawing

it, not making it, not doing sculptures, but actually creating

an event. This is art. Bang. Working with Peter Stringfellow

gave me confidence to work with other people or groups of people.

It made me realise that the public, members of the public, were up for

working with artists and were interested in artists. So the next

person I had to ring up and ask to work with me was the manager of a

The idea came about through a conversation in a pub with a bunch

of mates. And the words were put together and I just thought, that

actually can work. You can actually do that. I knew nothing at all

about acid house music before I met Jeremy. I never even knew what it

was. So he sent me these tapes of acid house music and my first

reaction was, "Oh dear, this is not going to work at all in a brass

band." Anyway, I persevered with it and listen to more tracks. And I

found, in fact, one or two things did work. For instance, in a piece

like 808 State's Pacific 202, I found that the opening chords

worked very well on the tenor horns, the baritone tenor horns, and the

You see, it sounds rather nice, doesn't it? Then there was a lovely

lyrical solo line which worked And there were some very busy riffs

in the bass which worked I just thought this could work as

an idea but also as a musical project. It wasn't just funny. I

mean, there's humour in it, obviously. There is meant to be

humour and absurdity like in a lot of things I do. But there is

totally something about it that resonated beyond it just being a

music project. Good, OK. Make sure, Martin, you

get that. That's the old rap. "Let me ask you a question. What time is

As soon as the words were put together, the flow chart came into

my mind. My brain just went like I was actually trying to prove a

point beyond music. Maybe about music's relationship to history and

The first time we played it, we really didn't think it was any good,

did we? No. Rubbish. It was a bit repetitive. Once they saw the

audience reaction, then they It's the atmosphere that makes

these gigs. People are dancing. But one of the big points about it all

is that we remain as a brass band. The tradition of brass band. We sit

where we should sit, we wear what we should wear, play instruments we

should play and you can see people are like, "What's going on?" And

then when we played these acid house anthems people really love it.

They tune into it like that. They were all up dancing at these

barriers at the front of the stage, it was crazy. Bjork was there. She

was dancing in the aisles. Women had to be moved off the stage.

dancers dancing around. It was just hilarious. The more concerts we did,

that is what made it. The free ale at the end made it for me. I was

It was a liberation. It wasn't even a turning point. It opened

everything up to me and since then, the projects I'm best known for

have been ones like Acid Brass, in the sense that you're working with

groups of people. Or doing something live as opposed to

something which can exist in a In fact, the project I'm best known

for was the next one I did after Acid Brass. And it took that idea

of collaboration to a much bigger level. There were about 1,000

people involved and this time it had a much more confrontational

We're on Highfield Lane near Sheffield. But most people know

this area, a lot of people know this area as Orgreave, the site of

a massive confrontation between striking miners and the police in

NEWSREADER: When the first convoy was spotted at around 9 o'clock,

the trouble began. The pickets As a teenager, I'd seen on the news

on TV this battle. I saw miners being pursued up the hill by

mounted policeman. And it look like something out of a medieval battle

to me. And it disturbed me, as a young person. So I wanted to

research into it later on in my life. And in 2001, I made a re-

enactment of that confrontation. And the re-enactment used people of

re-enactment societies around Britain and also 200 former miners

took part in it and played themselves effectively. It was

really a piece of performance art, What did you think when you heard

that I, or someone, was going to re-enact that battle in the place

where it happened more or less with 1,000 people? At first we thought

it was a bit odd because it only just happened. Having a re-

enactment of something so recent. But then it was a major turning

point, a major struggle. It wasn't meant to be forensic. It's like

when a crime is reconstructed for the public to jog their memories.

It was like a re-enactment of a huge crime scene. That's how I saw

it. Almost doing a post-mortem and digging up this body that had been

left. And just digging around in it. People said was about healing

wounds but it was the opposite. I wanted to make people more angry. I

didn't want to heal any wounds really. We didn't either. People

said it was a way of building bridges but I'm not sure. The most

important bridge for us was that one down there which is where they

chased us across the bridge. wanted those people who do re-

enactments to understand history doesn't end at 1945. It carries on

and great battles happen in Britain and they're not all to do with what

you would call conventional wars. The modern historians would like to

forget that there were ever miners and there was a battle of Orgreave.

Or there was a great miners' strike. They want to get on with a new

modern, streamlined world and look where it left us. We put all our

eggs in a basket of the bankers, closed down all the coal mines and

steelworks, and then the bankers take-off. And now they want to tax

us for the problems they created. It all comes back to this field in

Orgreave. All of that, because there was a clear division in

society. There were two roads you could go down. Thatcher's road and

monetarism, or social responsibility and community. And

I'm a visual artist. I did the project with an art organisation, I

told people I was an artist. Do you think that had any bearing on it

for you or for the other people who took part? No, because we are

pretty conventional people and art, to us, is like somebody painting on

a canvas with a little beard and that. And making pots or something.

I think the miners and their families saw it as an opportunity

to tell a story that needed telling. And to record for posterity a

little bit from our point of view. The reconstruction was a really

worthy endeavour, I thought and all credit to you. Thank you. It's been

lovely seeing you, Derek. You haven't changed a bit. Oh, thank

you. Your hair is a bit longer. There's a gap though. The miners,

united, will will never be defeated. The miners will never be defeated.

Til next time, anyway! It's a whole notion of making art that can be

given away. It's free. It's for everybody. Everybody is part of

making the artwork. It is an idea that is inconsistent with what you

are supposed to do as an artist in this day and age. And that's really

nice. I think that's a really I suspect he makes less money than

people think he does. His work is not saleable. You have artists, go

into auction, they become expensive, iconic, it is not, that is not a

bad thing, it is another way of doing it. Jeremy is Jeremy's are

cultural things. Jeremy is almost egoless. I think, you know this is

the secret of why he is o open to working with other people and to

getting excited about what they are doing, drawing things out of them,

rather than it being about what he is authors himself. We know there

are artists in this country that like to be photographed doing

things, and they opinions they like to foist on to people. I hope I'm

not one of those people. Here I am having a TV show made about myself.

Sitting with a television on my lap. So there is a contradiction there

for beginner, at least I am aware of it. Some artists don't know how

annoying they are. So after Orgreave I left Britain for almost

two years, I was travelling round America.. I didn't know what the

reion -- reception for the Orgreave project would be. So I ended up in

America where I made a film about the state of mind of Texas. I am

glad I went. Within the past hour the win over the Turner Prize has

been announced. It has gone to a man who admits he can't paint oar

draw. Jeremy Deller was told he wasn't good enough to take an O-

level in art but he has picked up one of the art world's most

prestigious awards. Beforehand my mother said we are proud of you and

if you don't win it is fine. There was about five seconds celebs, and

she said if you do win, it will be amazing. We became parents of a

Turner Prize winner, so people suddenly said, I didn't know your

son was an artist. It casted legitimacy on what you are doing.

If you are an artist like Jeremy, it can help. It was a short cut to

getting something done. There is no argument. Is he good or not, it

doesn't matter, he has won a prize. That is good. So he is a good

person, and he is a good artist. One of the best things about

winning the Turner Prize is you don't have to go and find work, it

tend to find you, so offers of work and commissions started to come in

and the Depeche Mode film was one such commission. So this photograph,

is of Depeche Mode fans in Red Square in about 1991 or 92. All

trying to dress like the band with their mum's clothes and stuff. It's

a good look. It is a good strong look.

# In your room # Time stands still. #

Nick Abrahams and I were commissioned to make a film for

Mute Records, about Depeche Mode. We suggested we would make a film

where the band didn't appeared. If you saw them it was only fleeting.

The fans were maybe more interesting than the band. I like

it when people are enthusiastic about things, have a child like

enthusiasm. We met a German family called the Granszows who like to

dress up as people who are in Depeche Mode videos. One of the

parents say our hob wri is Depeche Mode. Some people like sport. Our

hobby is Depeche Mode. It's a rational way of looking at it. You

don't think people who love sport are crazy. Best stories really from

Russia and eastern Europe, because the band there were as big as The

Beatles were in the 60s. They were the biggest thing ever. They were

seen as soundtracking the end of We got met at the airport, by about

40 Depeche Mode fan, all carrying these banner, going long live

Depeche Mode. The interesting thing about Russian fans was they had

nothing until recently. They might have had a cassette and a

photograph and try and work out what these people were like. It was

through having very little that made them creative, and bigger fans

really. When Jeremy went back to Russia to do this film, people were

"Welcome back Jeremy" banners, which I suspect he must have

photographs O I was a bit jealous. Now, whenever I travel I expect, I

asked for this to have 30 people with banners whenever I arrive any

where. # I just can't get enough #

It shows you what music does. That is the beauty of Jeremy. He does

things in a very simple way. Straightforward, not complicated.

People feel part of it. They don't feel alienated by it and they feel

they can get into it, but it is not dumb. It is very intelligent.

Because I didn't go to art college, I never felt I had to be obscure

and slightly tricky and arty. I think if you go to art college,

they expect that, and they want to see difficulty and strangeness, and

obtuseness. Neither Alan nor I went to art college. We are direct in

what we do, if not simple. We are simple people, making simple art,

for other simple people basically. That is the way I look at it. We

were talking about what we suspected would be on show in the

Millennium Dome, the kind of corporate version of Britain and

British creativity. And we just knew that it wouldn't represent the

Britain that intrigued us, the things we liked when we were going

about, so we decided we would maybe make an exhibition that would be in

response to Millennium Dome. Most of the things we bumped into, which

is often the best way to find stuff, when you think you are looking for

one thing and you find something else. The underlying sensation,

that we got, and we wanted to translate was the energy, you know,

everyone is at something creative, and it is just absolutely

torrential. This is art made by builders or people working. The

Clown museum, with all the clown faces that are panted on. Painted

signage, this is my favourite one actually. Piazza Rut. We came

across a mechanical elephant we used in the show. Made by a man

called Peter Claire. When he met us he was scared. We called him a

genius within about 30 seconds of meeting him. We were begging him to

lend it to us, so that was a very good day, we got an elephant in

that hunt. The only real rule we had was they were things that were

made by people who wouldn't consider themselves artists. In a

way we were challenging the art world to a fight, an aesthetic

fight, saying I think artists can think they are the only creative

people round, which is not the case. So we were sort of pointing a

finger at other things, saying you think you are good, look at what

this guy has done, look at this performance, just to ground people,

saying there is other stuff going on that isn't going on in

Shoreditch. My Lords, ladies and gentleman. We are gathered here

today to play the ancient game of Haxey. So the Haxey hunt is like a

giant rugby scrum that happens in the village of Haxey once a year.

It has been going on for 700 year, they have characters called the

Fall and the Lord and 11 bog bs who dress in red. They sing songs in

the four pubs, and then even goes up the field with a hood which is

like a leather baton and that is thrown in. Even tries to push or

sway it into one of the four pubs. If it crosses the threshold that

pub keeps it until the next year, which is a big thing. This could be

the most important thing in your life or the most ridiculous. Like

art you try to wonder what the point is, and it is lost in the

mist of time what is the point of It is a public spectacle and human

beings are interested in what other humans are up to, and human

When you think of performance art and what that entails, when you see

this, it is like a performance en Folk Archive was as much about the

people that made the work as the work itself. One of those people

was Ed Hall who makes banners. Ed and I have been working together

for about 12 years and he is a key part of this show at the Hayward.

Banners are a visual representation of people's aspirations. They are

quite grand really, in their aim, and they are a visual thing, so

they, the whole of it, you know in a eight foot by six foot square,

they are showing the hopes and fears of a group of people. I think

the reason we have collaborated so long is the subject matter of what

I do. Jeremy's interested in social history and contemporary life, and

I am making things that directly relate to it. He is interested in

the human condition, when people combine together, what they can

achieve. That is part of his method of working. What you doing here? We

showed some of Ed's banners at Tate Britain if 2000. We did a

retrospective of the banners which went to Paris, about 60 or so, that

was fantastic. From there, I bothered Ed for the last 12 years

to do things we many and work on projects. I think what is

interesting about banners, when you hold a banner or march behind one

you are telling people what you believe in. It is good to see that

in public. Ed makes politics look good and he brings beauty to these

causes and hope, through that Bute ty. All those ideas, all very ideal

lis tick and of course, you can laugh at them and so on, but if you

bring hope through art or beauty and comfort, through these banner,

that is a great achievement Ed is doing banner force the exhibition.

One is based on those signs you see outside church hauls that have an

art exhibition for a day or weekend, and you go this with high hopes and

you leave deflated. Which terrible because people are going to go in

with low hopes to my show and come out inflated. And then inside,

there is a banner entitled My Failures, which is a section of the

show. Which I find hard to understand that one. There we gro.

It will all be explained. These are things that are failures because I

never got to do them I thought they would be good. Which all artists

have those, so, that is what I tried to do. It is a massive

section of the show. It is 90% of the show! You should carry on with

your work. I don't know why you are The biggest collaboration I have

done with Ed was for a procession I was asked to do something for a

public event and I thought I would make a procession about the town.

As a way of showing the town to itself, really. And elements of the

town I thought was interesting and I liked. Ed made all the banners to

introduce each section, and the banners were almost like titling.

They were like inter-titles on something. Emos, goths, kids. Guys

with modified cars. Big Issue sellers. And then you have carnival

queens. A lot of traditional things but also unusual things. So, in a

way, it was about the public life of the town shown again in public

We took a tea bar from Bury and put it in the possession on a float. It

must have been quite difficult when he walks up to a tea bar in Bury

and says, "Oh, by the way, I want to make a facsimile of your bar and

take it on a float." It's connecting with people in a way

that they are actually enjoying it and entertained. And there's all

these other things going on as well. He's making all these amazing kind

of cultural connections. I always believed that the last float in any

possession should be a steel band. And, for my procession, I wanted

one playing music made in # "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy

Andy was contacted to do this arrangement but also to get the

I remember very clearly meeting him and giving him this assignment,

effectively. And then coming back about three weeks later and walking

up the stairs and they had a small band playing music and I couldn't

believe it. I thought it was amazing. I had this idea and

someone to help me realise it like that, literally, a tears your eyes

moment when they were playing their songs together for the first time.

It was kind of a worry, as well, because you told me what songs you

wanted and that. But to get my take on it and not destroy them too much,

that was my big worry, that you would come back and think, "Oh,

wow." When you said you liked it, I We've never really played this type

of music before. We've always done Caribbean stuff. It's certainly

different what we normally do but it's in keeping with the fact we

try to be as versatile as possible, anyway. I've never played rock

before but it was a nice change. I like it, the vibe, have a little

dance. I get into anything with music. If I don't dance, I just

rock my head. I like music. I wanted to work with a steel band

for years and years. It's a sort of mini dream come true, really. And

that's the great thing about being an artist. You can have an idea,

and somebody might actually do it for you. I'm over the moon where

Jeremy is concerned. Having us within his work. He's lovely. We

like Jeremy. Very down-to-earth. He For me, art has always been a

series of opportunities that I can try and exploit, really. And so

this exhibition is about a series of opportunities I have been given

or I have given myself throughout the years. And I think I saw that

when I went to the factory when I was 20. When I saw how it worked.

And realised that he just made the most of his opportunities and he

created his own world around that. In this show there is film work.

There is very small work, Then there is work which is

collaborative involving lots of people. So, there's all different

kinds of work here. Which maybe show the breadth of what I'm

capable of. Or incapable of, probably more to the point. It's

not just old work in the show. There's quite a lot of new work and

one of which is a film about the I could be a tulip. I could be a

man. The only way of knowing is to catch me if you can. You may

suppose what you want to suppose but I'm a sweet transvestite with a

broken nose. I was made aware of Adrian Street

quite recently through a quite shocking photograph of him and his

father. I thought that photograph summed up so much about post-war

Britain. And as soon as I saw that photograph I thought, I wonder if

that person is still around. It would be amazing to meet and talk

about the picture itself and get a clearer idea of who he was and what

He just had this almost Dickensian life in terms of growing up in a

very tough part of South Wales in the valleys. Becoming a miner,

because he had to, basically. Running away from home to London at

the age of 16. Becoming a body builder, a pin-up. Then he became a

And so, that photograph was revenge. It's him, Adrian, going back to the

pit where he worked and had been bullied and teased and laughed at,

to show his father and the other guys in the pit, the ones behind

his father, what he had made of himself. And how proud he was of

how he looked. He's looking amazing and he knows he looks amazing. And

these guys are just covered in coal dust and crap, you know. They look

like from another world, from the Middle Ages. Here he is like

someone from the future, coming to show them what the future could be

like. It's fantastic. And he did it because he hated them which makes

it even better. It wasn't cos he liked these people. He absolutely

despised them and he wanted to show He's an incredible guy. I don't

even think he knows how incredible he is, in a way. He thinks he's

amazing and he is. But he's amazing for other reasons, as well. The

journey he took, the route he took in his life, it's incredibly

important. And symbolic of the route Britain was trying to take at

the same time to go from a country which relied on industry to one

which essentially relied on entertainment and services. And

basically he was a trailblazer for that route. All I do with this now

is that, that, and that. And pop it over the way there for my wife,

A lot of people could say about what's in my exhibition and things

I do, "That's not art because it's a nature film. It's not art because

it's a documentary. This that and the other. It's a piece of music."

But I think you should look at it in a different way and say music

can be an art work, good documentary is an art work. And

definitely nature films are artworks. So I'm reflecting maybe

on my view of that. So maybe they are not art. It doesn't matter.

It's still there and you can still appreciate it. Don't get worried

about terms of what is and isn't art. It's a terrible cul-de-sac,

basically. A dead end you find yourself in and there's no way out

of it. So the thing to do is just enjoy it for what it is.

So the last piece of work in the exhibition is the film of the bats.

That's the newest piece of work. But before I show it at the Hayward,

I want to show it at my primary school. Earlier on this year they

named a house after me in the primary school with my full name

which is quite funny. So these poor kids have been branded by me, so I

thought I might show them the film, to say thanks for the branding

You know, I came here about a year ago, wasn't it? Were you here then?

We talked about bats and you all seemed very excited about that so I

thought what I would do today is come back with a film I've made and

show it to you first before I show it to anyone else. And when you

come and see it at the Hayward Gallery, you can see it in 3D. You

have got a question. Why do you love bats so much? I love bats

because they are the only mammals that can fly. They look amazing and

they have the ability to see in the dark. They are very, very clever.

What do they eat? Spiders. Moths. They like mosquitoes, little flies.

This young man with the glasses? the cave, were there mountains of

poo and stuff and cockroaches? know what, in the cave, there are

mountains of poo like this. And on the poo, there are little maggots

and beetles. And they are all moving around. And if a bat falls

off, he gets killed by the maggots and beetles. They eat it. It's

really grim. So, this is the world premiere of