Jeremy Deller - Artist HARDtalk

militants into Israel. Now, time for HARDtalk. Welcome to

HARDtalk. The art world loves its labels and

categories. My guest today defies all of them. Jeremy Deller is a

visual artist who can't paint, can't draw, and professes no great

technical skill, and yet he is widely regarded as an important

artist in Britain today. He uses images, objects, words and real

people to present a portrait of the modern world through the factory

floor to the Iraq War. What is at the heart of his creative vision?

Jeremy Deller, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. I just talked about how

difficult it is to label you, to pin you down. How would you describe the

art that you do? That is a very good question. It is art, it is

conceptual art, it is based on ideas, but it is art that uses

everything that surrounds it. It is not traditional. Most people that I

work with have no problem with me being an artist, because they

understand I'm doing something interesting and creative. It is a

form of art, but it is not traditional. It is interesting you

talk about the people you work with. It seems one of the keys to what you

do is collaboration. You work with other people to do something

collective. Yes. I don't have traditional art skills, as you said

in the opening. Everyone can draw and paint, but I just can't do it

very well, and I wasn't encouraged to at school. If anything, I was

actively discouraged. Is it true that you were thrown out of art

class when you were a teenager? I might have been 12, my art teacher

and I didn't see eye to eye and it wasn't working. I went to pottery,

which was great. From the age of 12 I really didn't do any drawing or

painting. I love art, and I love being around art, so I always knew I

would do something with it or around it. That is something I had from my

childhood. There is something about that love story that I found

fascinating. As you say, you loved art but you were not a drawer or a

painter, but when you went to college you chose to study art

history. And then almost by chance you met Andy Warhol. It wasn't so

much by chance, it was planned. We knew he was going to be at this

opening in 1986, the year before he died, and I thought, I have to go

and be in the same room as this person, because he was such a hero

to me. For a lot of young people who are into art, Andy Warhol is often

the first point of contact with contemporary art. I thought, I've

got to be in the same room with him. He ended up signing some things I

had, then one of his entourage chatted to me, and then I met him

after that. What strikes me about that is that Andy Warhol was a man

who played with the commercialisation of art, the

commodification of art. His message was, there is a grey area between

art and product. He almost invented it. He really was the first to do

this. He set a real standard for other contemporary artists, for good

and bad, I have to say. That's the thing, you always made a point of

saying you do not want to get to a point in your artistic life where

you are not entirely focused on producing unique creative work, just

becoming a reproducer. Becoming a factory, effectively. And yet you

say Andy Warhol is your favourite. I think it is because he had a very

strong idea and kept pursuing it. And he was true to his idea. He also

had other ideas, he was into filmmaking, music, publishing, so he

didn't see any differentiation between fine art and making a

magazine, or making film. Or being in an advert, or working with

musicians. And that is very attractive. He opened up for you the

concept of art being much more than paint on canvas or charcoal drawing

or anything like that? About freedom, really. When you went to

the factory and walked around the room and saw someone making a TV

show, someone putting a magazine together, you realised he's created

this world for himself, and it is all about freedom and possibility,

and very exciting. I'm jumping ahead a little bit, the key moment for me

reading your biography, this decision you took in your 20s,

playing around with the idea of what art is, and what it can be, to open

up your bedroom in your parents' house as an exhibit for the local

community. It was more extreme than that. My parents went on holiday,

and I opened up the whole house. I made an exhibition in the house.

With their permission? Without their permission. My mother only found out

when she opened up a book later and saw a picture of our toilet in the

book. She was horrified because the seat was left up! She didn't see

that as art? I think the fact that I have been successful about

something, I lived at home until I was 31 and they had no idea what was

going on. I sort of had an idea. Now it is very clear that it is OK, and

they are very happy. I wonder about that "anything goes" idea. We say

anything can be art, but that doesn't mean anything is art. How do

we define the difference between taking a toilet and it being a

toilet, and then putting it in a different context and turning it

into a piece of art? This is the big question. Not even I can answer it

thoroughly. I think it is in your mind. If you want to accept that as

an artwork in your mind, as an individual, then so be it. If you

don't want it that is fine. You don't have to have a crammed down

your throat. If people don't like what I do, and don't think it's art,

that's fine. The label can be very misleading and can upset people, but

you have to remember that toilet, wherever it was put, there was ideas

behind it. A wealth of ideas. I want to talk to you now about perhaps the

work that brought you to Britain, The Battle of Orgreave, and a an

idea you had to re`enact a very important time. A very long running

and important battle between the government and the miners. The

miners' strike, in 1984. The strike was continuing, there was a

stand`off around the Orgreave coking plant, and police moved against the

striking miners. Violent clashes. You chose, 17 years later, to

re`enact it with hundreds and hundreds of extras, some of whom I

think were actual former miners. Former miners with their families,

and re`enactors, people who belong to reenactment societies, so at

weekends will dress up in Napoleonic costumes, or English civil war, and

the American Civil War, which is the second most popular reenactment

society. I called it the English Civil War initially, Part Two,

because if you lived through the miners' strike, as you probably did,

you would realise how divisive it was. It was almost how a civil war

would feel like. It was a very divisive time, a very important time

in Britain for all sorts of reasons, including the power of Thatcher and

her ideas. I'm just struggling to see why it was necessary, why you

felt as a public school boy from the south of England, that you needed to

explore this. It's not as if there weren't heaps of current affairs

documentaries, journalistic books and other material about this

conflict. There had been. The thing about the strike is that after the

strike there were a lot of books. A lot of people wrote their books and

set the record straight on their terms. A lot of the villages

published pamphlets on life during that period. Then it went very

quiet, and we have things like Billy Elliot, which was a romanticisation

of the idea with a backdrop of dance. I wanted to make a very

harsh, uncomfortable artwork about the miners' strike, at a time when,

in Britain at least, it was new Labour, the art world was on the up,

I wanted to remind ourselves of this terrible moment, this trauma. Were

you doing it in a spirit of anger? Yes, puzzlement and anger. Instead

of writing a book about the miners' strike, I did that. If you have a

spirit of anger in yourself, and this goes beyond that work to other

works, and we'll talk about that in a minute, do you want to instil

anger in your audience, your viewers? That's a very good

question, because a lot of people thought I was doing this as a way of

healing wounds, but I was doing the opposite. I was doing it to make

people angry again. Many people had forgotten about it, or their kids

didn't know about it. So you wanted to politicise it? Yes. I'm beginning

to think maybe you do have a political agenda. It was a political

artwork, and there is no way I can get around that. I saw it as a

way... You know, if a child gets murdered or something horrible

happens, the police re`enact the murder. I wanted to do something

like that. I was very much on the miners' side, and they were very

suspicious of me at first. There is still this lingering distrust of the

media. There are so many interesting questions about this as it relates

to real`life and to art. If you say quite blatantly to me, I was on the

miners' side, then that is for you to tell the world from the miners'

point of view, where is the forensic reenactment of what actually

happened? Of course it wasn't a forensic reenactment. We went to the

place where it happened, got the original people who were involved,

and made a version of it. It's impossible to recreate a riot, but

you go back there, and because you do that thing in that space you are

bringing up the questions again. People are thinking about it, then

you make a book and a documentary about it. So the phantoms will rise

again. You are explicit about the political nature of it, and to bring

us more up`to`date with current work, you have just had this major

exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Again, some images, photographs,

pictures, video, that suggest you are pretty angry about the nature of

capitalism. The nature of the world in general, capitalism maybe. For

example, people who haven't seen it won't necessarily know, but you have

images imagining a popular uprising against the tax haven of Jersey, you

have a picture of William Morris arising from the sea grabbing a

superyacht. Yes, they were meant to be funny, actually. There was also a

humour about re`enacting a battle from the miners' strike. It was

absurd, comedic. I wanted those big paintings to be absurd almost.

They're like Greek myths, contemporary ones. So, Poseidon is

actually William Morris. It is meant to be funny and slightly strange,

but it is how I look at things. We have one picture of this wry humour

that is worked into this, you've got a thing about cars. Big cars in

particular. Yes, I do actually. So let's have a look at this video you

have of some big SUV vehicles being crunched up by a crane, and you have

put it to music. Here we have smashed up SUVs

pirouetting around with this giant mechanical claw, and I think this is

part of a wider work that you have talked about being 'A Great Day For

Cyclists'. It is actually, the work in question is a huge painting of a

rare British bird with a Range Rover, that is very specifically a

Range Rover, I do not like them. Being in the claws of this giant

erred. So again, it is about retribution. Something coming back

from the dead, or a mythic creature. It is destroying this Range Rover.

That image in particular that we have seen, and the fact that it has

this calypso music. Yes. It is celebratory. It is celebrating the

demise of consumerism. Yes, sort of. I'm a cyclist. Everything comes from

a personal point. I am a cyclist in London, which means a lot of things,

or can mean a lot of things, and the one car you fear more than any other

is the Range Rover because the people who drive it drive in a

certain way and it is very wide and they are often on the phone and not

paying any attention. I am generalising now. But they are the

cars you fear. I am getting a feel for your mindset. And I've led us

down this path because I specifically want to turn the tables

on you in a way and say that all of this association, the personal and

political that you have woven into your work, and it has to be from a

left of centre perspective, that is what you have brought to the table,

and you are working in a world of contemporary arts, in which scores

of millions of pounds slosh around, much of it going to successful

artists like yourself, you work in collaboration with agents and

dealers and collectors in a cosy system which makes everybody frankly

very wealthy. So where does your left`wing perspective work in that?

Well, we are all part of this world. In fact, the art world is really a

reflection on the wider world around us. The art world is not the only

piece of corruption that goes on. I am not even saying that it is

corrupt. I'm just saying that you bought into a world and you benefit

from a world which is so far removed from the political messages that

inhabit your work. Well, the art world is not just one thing. It is

not just super billionaires on yachts. It is grassroots activity.

There are many different art worlds. And I inhabit a few of them. I was a

trustee of the Tate. Well, you are part of the establishment. I am

absolutely part of the establishment. But that does not

mean you have to kowtow to the ideas of certain people who come and go in

the art world. Art has always been about power, always. Look at every

famous artwork ever. It has either been made for a pope, the king, a

prince, whatever. People who are wealthy love to be near art because

it gives you a sacred power, almost. Has your success changed you,

though? You say that, I am part of this world, but only in a specific

sense. But there is a great quote that talks about the Picasso napkin

syndrome, where an artist realises that even just writing their

signature on something gives it a value. And you know, you have

actually reached that status. You are famous. I am almost at napkin

status. Has that actually been corrosive? It could be. I do not

think it has yet. You would have to ask other people. I think I have

kept a level head. I do not sell a lot of work. I do not make tons of

money. I don't have that production ethic. You have slagged off others,

contemporaries of yours, who you say, Hirst had it then lost it. He

is a massive failure because he had it then let it slip. The reason? He

realised he could make money out of repetition. Yes, I mean, that

happened to Warhol as well. He let it go. The only thing that has

progressed is the amount of money he can make. Before we end, I want to

look at the work that you are actually touring with right now in

the UK. And that is a fascinating exhibition. You have called it All

That Is Solid Melts Into Air. What it seems to be is as much a

fascinating insight into the social history of the 19th century UK and

the Industrial Revolution as it is art in the traditional sense. And

let's bring up a photo and then we can talk about this and what it

means. This is an emblematic photo in the exhibition. It is a photo I

have used a lot in the past. For me it is probably the most important

photograph taken after the war in Britain. It shows what is happening

in Britain. All the tensions and changes in British society. It shows

us going from industrial culture to a culture that is based on

entertainment, services, creativity. And the reason it works is because

of the link. The man on the left is a traditional miner whose son, on

the right, Adrian Street, became a professional wrestler because after

going down the mine he realised this was no life for him. At 16 years of

age, he ran away to London, and eventually joined the world of

bizarre entertainment. And he went back home. He went back home

specifically for a Sunday newspaper, which asked him where he would like

to be photographed and he said I would like to go back to the pit and

show those men behind him who would beat him up, what he has made of his

life. So it is a sort of a revenge photograph. The father, who looks so

tense and uncomfortable and confused. Absolutely. Who is this

person? His father is looking at the future. It is like someone from the

future has come to show these industrial people what the world is

going to be like, and you are not going to be part of it. I am the

future. I always see it almost like something out of William Blake. I

find that fascinating. I suppose we can end almost where we began, with

the discussion of the concept of art as you talk to me about why you were

so moved and taken with this photograph. I am fascinated by what

you are telling me, but I am thinking that you are really acting

more as a curator would than an artist. Yes, I am. Is that where you

are moving? It is one way I am moving. But I like to move at

different places at different times. But I love being around art and

working with art and mixing art with other things and doing that. I am

not a very conventional curator. Because I do not have the academic

rigour that curators often have of a theory. I'm more instinctive. So a

lot of curators would look at the photograph and maybe not see what I

see. I see this as a sordid history of the UK in this one photograph.

The thing about Adrian is he is still alive and he still wrestles. I

have made a film about him. He's an amazing person. He's an incredible

person and a force of nature. I get the whole picture and I see many

things and I see history and art history. We have interviewed a lot

of artists on this programme, but I do not think I have interviewed an

artist who uses so many different media to get his perspective on life

across. You know, from drawn image to photographic image to what you

call, or some have called, social sculpture, using real people.

Obviously you use music a lot, that is important to you. Film. I just

wonder, as you move forward to your next projects, what medium means the

most to you? Where is the power? The power, without sounding like a

cliche, the power is in people, human beings, working with people

and their minds. Putting an idea out there and people having it in their

minds and the idea of staying within them. So I think working with the

public and working in the public is what I like to do the most. So that

is something I will be doing. Will you continue, final point, we have

talked about politics, I wonder as you talk about the power of people,

whether sometimes you are constrained by your politics,

whether the message you want to deliver gets in the way of being

truly open to as many different people and as many different media

as possible. I do not think so. Because I think the way I present

work is in a way that is actually quite neutral. I mean, that

painting, for example, of the bird with a Range Rover, anyone can

appreciate that. It is a skilful painting, but the messages behind it

are universal. I did a project a few years ago where I took a car that

had been destroyed in Baghdad around the US on the back of a trailer. It

was on display all the time and I went with an American soldier and an

Iraqi citizen and we just turned up in towns in the south, in slightly

tricky places, potentially, and spoke to the public about this

destroyed car. It was the most amazing experience of my life. And

you could see, that was a very dangerous, very political... It was

dangerous and political. It was not specifically anti`war. It was about

the Iraq War, but it was about taking something from the museum out

and touring it around. This relic, almost, for people to look at. And

obviously I had my opinion about the war, but we did not foist opinions

on people. We wanted to see what people thought about this car. A lot

of them had served in Iraq or Vietnam and they were very

interested. We had an amazing response. We did not get thumped

once. Art as the starter of debate and conversation. It is all about

the response. It is. That was definitely about conversation and

provoking conversations which were not party political, which were

about this thing that America had got itself into. It has been a

pleasure having you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Stephen.