Jeremy Deller

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the artist Jeremy Della. A Turner Prize winner, he is equally unconventional and influential. He doesn't paint, draw or sculpt. His art includes installations, film, photography, and what he calls cultural interventions. In July 2016, passers-by were astonished when hundreds of World War One soldiers appeared, unannounced, at railway stations, bus stops and shopping centres, from Plymouth to Shetland. This was a powerful Jeremy Della memorial to the Battle of the Somme. His work is often about doing things rather than making things and is rooted in a lifelong fascination with British culture, from seaside towns to Stonehenge via the Battle of Orgreave. Other works have included a brass band playing acid house tracks, millions of bats flying out of a cave and a car destroyed in a bomb attack during the Iraq War.

Presenter1:37

There were early clues that he would become an artist who does things differently. One of his first creative endeavors was making a three-foot model of a locust. He took it to school on the back of his bike, only to find out that all the other kids had made their model insects actual size. He says, I never lose my temper. My art is my way of losing my temper. I get everything out through that. I only hope his mum, who had to repaint the kitchen after the locust incident, shares that disposition. Jeremy Della, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Jeremy Deller2:06

Thank you very much.

Presenter2:07

So, how much of what you produce does come out of the anger that I described there, or making mischief, as I think you call it?

Jeremy Deller2:14

I am quite an angry person, but I try to put it all within the work I make. I don't really lose my temper very often. I'm not for that. I don't really like confrontation. But I make quite confrontational work, weirdly.

Presenter2:25

What is it that makes you angry? What makes you angry at the moment?

Jeremy Deller2:29

Most things, people dropping litter. From people dropping litter to the general political situation in the world.

Presenter2:34

Okay, so that

Jeremy Deller2:34

Uh

Presenter2:34

The micro and the macro.

Jeremy Deller2:36

Absolutely, yes. Even on the way here I saw someone drop some litter. Just sent me nuts.

Presenter2:41

You've been called an assembler, a curator and an event organiser, or wonder how important it is to you that your work can go anywhere and take on pretty much any form.

Jeremy Deller2:51

For me it's really important. I like making work that is not in galleries. I do like making things happen.

Jeremy Deller2:56

In a way, I'm sort of a director, but I like art to leave the museum and the gallery, much as I love museums and galleries, and just get into the.

Jeremy Deller3:04

The world, as it were, and just see what happens. So, in a way, it's a big experiment making art because you're putting something out there and you're just seeing what the reaction is. Like with the soldiers, we're here because we're here. We didn't know what to expect from the public. We trained the young men who are taking part to expect actually verbal or physical abuse. We had no idea what would happen. And then, on the day when it happened, people were crying in front of them, they were sort of breaking down, it was very odd.

Jeremy Deller3:29

Reaction from the public, so you can never second-guess the public, and on the whole, I try and trust the public as well with their reactions.

Presenter3:36

And what was the starting point for this living memorial with young men dressed as soldiers from a century ago?

Jeremy Deller3:42

Well the people organising all these events around the First World War called 1418 Now, they approached me and said, We're struggling a bit with the Somme. How do you commemorate a disaster? And I thought, Well, it can't be objects, it has to be human beings because of the dead. They should be represented by living people and it had to be a memorial that moved around Britain, had its own life effectively, almost like a virus. And also it was a memorial that you didn't know about until you saw it, so there was no pre-publicity about it. Over 1400 people did this, and they walked around railway stations, and we went to villages and towns all over Britain, including Northern Ireland. That was very important to go to Northern Ireland.

Jeremy Deller4:19

They didn't speak, they had cards saying who they were representing that day, and they just hung around and were seen and were visible to the public.

Presenter4:26

Part of what made it special was this idea that it was a one-day experience, ephemeral. What interests you about art that is in the moment in that kind of way and then gone?

Jeremy Deller4:35

There was some research done after and they thought maybe up towards two million people actually experienced it in person. I think it's important not just uh to make experiences for people they remember rather than objects. There's enough objects in the world, frankly.

Presenter4:47

Your love of music has of course always been visible in your work since the earliest times. How much of a struggle has it been to choose your eight tracks today?

Jeremy Deller4:54

It's actually been awful, to be honest. I've really just, I don't know, I've been really stressful. I thought I had my tracks and that just disintegrated as soon as I started thinking about things. So these special tracks just disappeared, and then I had to reconstruct them. And I've been adding and taking away until last night. And I'm still not entirely sure this is the definitive list, but it has to be now.

Presenter5:16

Well, I think you've done an admirable job and we should get started with some music, shall we? What are we going to hear first and why?

Jeremy Deller5:21

I bought a lot of records as a child and I was really entranced by Glamrock and it made me understand the link between how music sounded but also how it looked. And I remember going with my father and buying seven inch singles and I remember buying this one.

Presenter6:06

The Sweet and Blockbuster. What a start, Jeremy Della.

Jeremy Deller6:10

Well, that's basically what my brain was what was going on in my brain, that kind of a chaos of that song. For me, I learnt about the outside world through Top of the Pops, which obviously is quite a strange way to learn about the world. Well, that for me was like the news effectively.

Presenter6:22

You were also a history buff when you were a kid, apparently.

Jeremy Deller6:25

I did love history. I loved museums. My dad used to take me to museums. That was my playing ground. And it still is in a way. That's where I go and play, in a sense. I just wander round the backstages of museums and just picking out things and looking at things. I'm very at ease in that world.

Presenter6:39

It was the Hornemann Museum I think they used to visit.

Jeremy Deller6:42

Yes, which is one of the what then was one of those amazing museums that were just stuffed full of strange things from around the world tribal artefacts and then stuffed animals and then all these odd things which for a treasure trove for a child and so it gave me a great visual sense and there was just amazing there was a carved Buddhist wooden carved Buddhist frieze of like people going to hell and stuff so you just look at all of that there's a torture chair there's all these things that like a little boy would be obsessed with all these sort of rather grim things so it's very it was a very exciting place for me to be

Presenter7:15

And you joined the art club there, I think?

Jeremy Deller7:16

I did. I mean, I was never very good at art, and this became much clearer later, but I they they had a sort of after school holiday art club which I just liked hanging around, just making a mess really.

Presenter7:27

And what sort of thing did you make?

Presenter7:29

Cool.

Jeremy Deller7:29

Really remember? I remember at school when I did pottery, I made a womble. I remember that. That's about the only thing I remember.

Presenter7:36

That's a for typically seventy starter.

Jeremy Deller7:38

I very for some reason I remember that very clearly.

Presenter7:41

Your work often involves collaborating with others, like the Battle of Orgreave and Acid Brass as well. What appeals to you about that way of doing things, I wonder?

Jeremy Deller7:48

Well, you can't do everything yourself.

Jeremy Deller7:51

Can you? And I need a lot of help with what I do. And if you're doing something with musicians, obviously I can't play every part I can't play music, for example. So it's just working with the public and involving people in what you do is actually very satisfying.

Presenter8:05

Your approach can be very playful too. I'm thinking about the blow-up Stonehenge that you came up with for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Tell me a little bit about sacrilege.

Jeremy Deller8:09

That's a good idea.

Jeremy Deller8:13

Well, I called it sacrilege'cause I just thought I'd get the criticism in before anyone else did. And I just wanted to make the most stupid artwork ever made.

Jeremy Deller8:21

And in a way, it was meant to counteract what I felt was the pomposity of sport sometimes. And the Olympics I felt was quite pompous. As it happened, it wasn't so pompous in the UK, but the whole Olympic movement seems to be really full of itself. So I just thought, well, let's do something about Britain that shows that we have a sense of humour about our history and we're willing to satirise ourselves almost and have fun with our history and our identity. It sort of freaked me out almost about the amount of enjoyment I was giving the public because I wasn't quite expecting that. But wherever it goes around the world, it's the same reaction. People just want to jump on it and run around and laugh.

Presenter8:57

Time for some music. Tell me about your second disc today. Why have you chosen this one?

Jeremy Deller9:01

I think pop music is actually a great art form. It's probably the greatest art form of the late twentieth century. And this song by The Beach Boys is called In My Room, but it's also my manifesto as well, I would say, as a young person, but even now. So it just says everything that I believe in.

Speaker 29:25

Where's the

Speaker 29:28

I can go and tell myself

Jeremy Deller9:33

Sleep.

Speaker 29:34

Uh

Jeremy Deller9:34

Brett's done.

Presenter9:47

The Beach Boys and In My Room. So, Jeremy Della, obviously, spending a lot of time in your room now for work, but a lot of time when you were young?

Jeremy Deller9:54

Yes, I had a black and white television in my room and I used to watch films, Austin Wells films and Ken Russell, people like that, and I just would watch those films, devour them really, on a black and white telly and I had my music there, my books. I just had everything I needed really. And so that for me was where I

Jeremy Deller10:11

Oh sort of travelled, sort of time travelled in my room really.

Presenter10:14

You were born and grew up in South London with your parents Ken and Barbara, and you had two sisters. What kind of household was it?

Jeremy Deller10:20

I would say it's a pretty solid

Jeremy Deller10:22

middle class, respectable household. My parents were big in the church, if that's the right way of putting it. You know, they went to church every Sunday and took me along until I stopped going when I was about twelve, thirteen. But I just got on with stuff, I just kept a low profile, especially as a teenager.

Presenter10:41

Your dad took you to the museum. I mean, was it an artistic household? Was there culture coming through the front door?

Jeremy Deller10:47

Sort of. Ne neither of them went to university. In a way my father regretted that and so I think he sort of taught himself and did these things for himself as much as for me.

Presenter10:55

And you attended Dulwich College, but it doesn't sound like it was a very happy time for you there.

Jeremy Deller10:59

Like a lot of schools at that time, it's changed a lot since, but then it was a school that still labored under the misapprehension that the British Empire was still going, and it led to quite an unpleasant atmosphere because of that.

Jeremy Deller11:12

It's almost like it's a prison sentence. You know it will end one day and you just sort of get on with it and just do what you're told. But it wasn't a a school of that really privileged the arts either. It was all about sport, and I was not about sport. I was all not about sport, so it I I didn't really fit in.

Presenter11:29

You weren't allowed to be about art either'cause you were kicked out of the art class when you were thirteen, I think.

Jeremy Deller11:32

I wasn't really allowed to be about anything. The art teacher and I didn't see eye to eye, so after the first year of attempting to do art classes I was sent to do pottery, which is where I made my womble. Which was great actually, that was a lot more relaxed. But it was a school that was very much about academic success. So if you weren't good at something, even if you're enjoying it, you were sent elsewhere.

Presenter11:55

You were undeterred though, because you did go on to study art history at the Courtard Institute, and around that time you met someone who was to change the course of your life, Andy Warhol.

Jeremy Deller12:04

Well, I mean he changed the course of the 20th century, probably more importantly, but yes, he did change my life. I met him briefly in London. I was with my friend Chris. We went to hang out with him in his suite at the Ritz with his mates. And we walk in and there he was with like three or four mates on a big settee, like very frou-frou, sort of Louis XIV settee, watching Benny Hill with the sound turned down and listening to a Roxy Music Greatest Hits album, which is in itself was like a great artwork.

Jeremy Deller12:35

He invited us to New York and you know when people in Britain say oh you must come and do this you must come in and drop in for a cup of tea they actually mean please do never come in and drop in for a cup of tea but he we I just thought well I will regret it for my dying day if I don't go out to New York regardless of what happens to me because it was all a bit of a mystery wasn't quite sure what was what was in store for us and we just went out to New York and hung around the factory I mean this is late factory it was 86 and he died the following year

Presenter13:03

You spent a fortnight there.

Jeremy Deller13:05

Yes, I mean I didn't live in the factory, that would have been odd, but I we've visited there quite a lot of time.

Presenter13:09

What did you chat about?

Jeremy Deller13:10

Gossip. He was very interested in the Royal Family and he was interested in what I'd been up to. Me and my mate had been out there and he just wanted to know where we'd been, who we'd met, what was going on, what the clubs were like, what music was being played, what people were wearing. And that's what he was about. It was like inf it was like the internet. He just wanted information all the time so he could like work with it and use it in some way later.

Presenter13:29

And what did you take away from that, that sense of all of these different things happening at one place?

Jeremy Deller13:33

I just, it just like, as an artist, you can make your own world and you can do exactly what you want. Whatever you're interested in can become art.

Presenter13:40

Time for some more music, then. Tell me about your third disc to day.

Jeremy Deller13:43

I've already mentioned the band, Roxy Music. They've been a band for as long as I can almost have memories, I remember this band as being part of my life. Life would not be worth living without this band in my life. They're like a friend.

Presenter14:23

Roxy Music and Out of the Blue.

Presenter14:26

Jeremy Della, by nineteen ninety three you were twenty seven, still living at home, and you put together an exhibition called Open Bedroom and you've spoken about wanting to get outside the gallery walls. That certainly wasn't in a gallery, was it?

Speaker 114:30

Uh

Jeremy Deller14:38

It wasn't. It was meant to just be in my bedroom, but then when I realised that my parents were on holiday, I could take over the whole house. So I did an exhibition in the whole house, used a bathroom, used just every room I could, and invited people to come and see the work I'd made. They didn't know until years later. My mother saw a picture of our toilet, or her toilet, in a book and was horrified, because the seat had been left up.

Jeremy Deller15:02

That was she was more worried about that than the fact that I'd done this thing in her house without telling her.

Presenter15:06

Quite easygoing. I mean, what's her assessment of your work? I know that you asked her to write about it for one of your projects.

Jeremy Deller15:13

I was just interested to know what she thought about it, because we don't really talk about it. She's just happy that I'm doing okay. Weirdly, you know, when I won the Turner Prize, finally she could talk about her son for years, for about ten years. There was nothing to say about me because I was doing nothing basically. And it must have been quite awkward for my parents. My people ask, oh, what's Jeremy up to? And it's like, well, he works part-time in a shop and he lives at home. That's not so great, really. She got to talk about your art with the Queen. I was invited to Buckingham Palace for some Christmas event, and my mother went with me. And she ended up talking to the Queen about what I did, and it just agreed with the Queen. My mother mentioned bats, and the Queen said, Oh, I don't know about bats. And my mum said, No, neither do I. So she sort of betrayed me there. But she had a great night.

Presenter15:54

As someone who's known for making public art in unconventional settings, I wonder what you make of the reverential atmosphere and all the specialist language that goes along with regular art galleries. There's a lot of art to speak, isn't there?

Jeremy Deller16:06

There can be, but uh you can avoid that. I try and avoid it.

Presenter16:10

And how much reverence do you think we should have for art and for artists?

Jeremy Deller16:13

No absolutely no reverence for artists whatsoever,'cause I know I am one. They're just lucky people, a lot of them, because they get to do things that no one else is allowed to do. That's how it feels. But for art, for certain kinds of art, I think we should be very glad it's in our lives.

Presenter16:28

The first piece of your work that caused a stir was acid brass. You've called it your coming out moment as an artist.

Jeremy Deller16:34

Well, I had an idea for a brass band to play acid house music. When it was happening, I didn't really partake of the big parties and so on, but I was watching it and I just thought, this is a really important moment. This is probably the biggest mobilisation of people since the miners' strike in Britain, but it's young people going to parties. It's not people going to picket pits or coking works or whatever, but it's actually people behaving in a new way en masse. So in 1996, I had the idea for a brass band to play acid house music. And the brass band obviously represents industrial culture. And Acid House was digital music, so it's post-industrial music. I was absolutely terrified ringing out the manager of a brass band. And they were the best band in Britain at the time called Williams Fairy Band. And I said, I couldn't even use the word Acid House because it had such bad connotations because of drugs and so on. I just said, would you be interested in playing some contemporary electronic music? And he said, yeah, we'll do it. We'll give it a go and see how it goes. And so that was a real moment for me. It liberated me from making objects to making things and making events and so on.

Presenter17:35

Let's go to the music and I think your next choice is a track that represents Rive Culture really.

Jeremy Deller17:40

It's a a song by the KLF, who are this incredible band who really made a lot of mischief in this arena. And of course popular music, like in arts, is a great area to make mischief in and to provoke and to annoy people in, and they totally understood that.

Speaker 118:01

This is what KLF is about.

Speaker 118:05

Also known as the Just Add Ancients of Moon Moon.

Speaker 118:09

That's a more loan for champs.

Presenter18:26

Last train to TransCentral by the KLF. Jeremy Deller, in two thousand one you restaged the Battle of Orgreave. Now that was a pivotal event in the miners' strike. On june eighteenth, nineteen eighty four, police and pickets clashed at the British steel coking plant in Orgreave in South Yorkshire. Why did you want to make that brutal day into a work of art?

Jeremy Deller18:44

Well, I remembered it as a you know, I was at school when Minor Strike was going on. I didn't take part in it in any way. I just observed it on television basically, and I remember seeing it.

Jeremy Deller18:54

On the news that evening, and it was really a shocking event, the imagery of men being pursued by police on horseback and dogs just thought to me, this is a war, this looks like a war, doesn't it? Like an industrial dispute. What's happening here? And so I wanted to literally go back to the same place and restage it. And I always see it as like a public inquiry, but a physical public inquiry into something.

Presenter19:18

It must have been very intense emotionally. I mean, you had eight hundred reenactors, I think, two hundred former minors. There was a reenactment director on site and Mike Figgis was filming the work as it took place. What was the day like for you?

Jeremy Deller19:24

Yeah.

Jeremy Deller19:29

Yeah.

Jeremy Deller19:31

For me, it was quite unusual because I'd lost control of the project by then. There were so many other people involved. I was just like this funny little bloke running around trying to get things to happen. But it was too late. It was all happening. Like, probably like a real battle. There's nothing really you could do. This thing had been organised. And for the first half, which was in the field, I actually took my headpiece off and walked away and went and bought a chocolate bar, a news agent, because I just couldn't bear it. I was so stressed. And then the second half was this pursuit through the village, which is still there. And I actually took part in it, which helped relax me. You know, it sounds a bit like a joke, like an absurd happening. And it was never meant to be that. It was meant to be very serious. I didn't want to make an artwork that people felt they'd been healed by or something. I actually want to make people more angry than they were about what happened.

Presenter20:19

Would you describe yourself as a political artist?

Jeremy Deller20:21

I with a small P. I mean, that's clearly a very political work, but not everything I do is. I mean, increasingly it has been, but not everything is. I mean, sacrilege wasn't political. I just make work about what I'm interested in. So that could be music, could be politics, could be anything in between really.

Presenter20:36

You mentioned control earlier and having lost control, I would have thought there's probably a point with a lot of your works where that happens. Logistics, weather, all of the stuff that can scopper it or change it.

Jeremy Deller20:48

Just the weather is enough sometimes, but I I I quite like losing control. I suppose the point about an art gallery is you're fully in control of the environment. That's the whole that's why they're so great, to see art. As soon as you get into the street, it it it's all all bets are off basically.

Presenter21:03

Jeremy Della, it's time for your fifth disc today. What's it gonna be?

Jeremy Deller21:06

Seeing as we're on.

Jeremy Deller21:07

I'm going to be on a desert island. I've chosen a song from a tropical island. It's called Fishermen by the Congo's. And I think I went to the Caribbean. I've been a few times but you go there and the way music it just permeates everything. Also our relationship in the UK with the Caribbean is clearly quite complex. But this song for me brings out the sort of spiritual element of the music from there.

Speaker 221:54

Oh, there's some on the road.

Presenter21:59

The Congos and Fishermen, Jeremy Della, for you to listen to on your desert islands. Yes, exactly.

Jeremy Deller22:04

Yes, as I as I slowly starve to death, I can listen to that and feel relaxed.

Presenter22:08

Starved to death, there are fish everywhere

Jeremy Deller22:10

It'd be like sushi and I'd eat the wrong parts and I'd sort of get some terrible stomach bug.

Presenter22:16

So let's go back to 2004 when you won the Turner Prize for a body of work that included Memory Bucket, a documentary about Texas. It was filmed in 2003 during the Iraq War and the subjects included the Waco Siege and George Bush and it ends with a sequence of millions of bats leaving a cave. What had you initially set out to capture?

Jeremy Deller22:36

I was trying to sort of take the temperature of Texas as I saw it at the time.

Jeremy Deller22:41

It was not the best time to be in America in a lot of ways. And the bats I felt just represented you could say that's a very hope hopeful sign of nature just getting on with it in this amazing, awe inspiring sight. Or you can see it as this apocalyptic moment when millions of bats come out of a cave.

Presenter22:59

And what did winning the tournament mean to you, personally?

Jeremy Deller23:02

Well, winning Latona Prize is you get invited to things that you've never got invited to before, dinners after things, and as soon as you get invited to these things you don't want to go for some reason.

Jeremy Deller23:11

So you can be very contrary.

Presenter23:12

Yeah.

Presenter23:13

You make work that isn't easy to sell because of obviously the form that much of it takes. I wonder how you feel about the commercial business side of the art market.

Jeremy Deller23:22

I mean I'm interested in it. I see it. I do sell things occasionally, but I don't go out of my way to attempt to do that. I did that once. I tried to make an exhibition of things in a commercial gallery and I did I sold one thing and then and and then it didn't get much better after that. So

Presenter23:35

What thing did you sell?

Jeremy Deller23:36

I thought it was a really I did a show of smiley faces silk screen and their eyes were Neolithic hand axes. So the winking eye or the eye is actually something that's maybe 40,000 years old. I thought that's such a nice thing to have. I'd have one of those on my wall, but no one else wanted them. So even when I try I can't do it. So I'm at my in a way I'm at my weakest when I try and

Jeremy Deller23:57

do shows and commercial galleries. I'm much better out in the world just mucking about really.

Presenter24:01

Let's go to some music. What about your sixth today? Why have you chosen this?

Jeremy Deller24:05

I love steel bands, they're like almost my favourite form of music making. I love it when you see a band play a song by another band and they reinterpret it. It just tells you so much about society, about changes in society. A few years ago I was with my partner and we went to Oxford Street and I heard this track being played by a steel band, this song. It's Alleluia by Leonard Cohen and it was this up-tempo, upbeat version. It was just fantastic. So I've commissioned a steel band that I work with in South London called The Melodians to perform Alleluia. And this is the first time probably it's ever been heard on radio.

Presenter25:11

Recorded especially for this programme by my castaway here, that's the Melodian Steel Orchestra with Hallelujah. So Jeremy Della, collaboration is obviously a big part of what you do, and you feature people from all walks of life in your art. Can anyone be an artist, do you think?

Jeremy Deller25:27

Um, I don't know really. I mean, I think everyone has creativity within them.

Jeremy Deller25:32

I mean, children are artists. Some of the best art I've seen has been made by kids, basically. So, yes, I'm going to say yes, they can be.

Presenter25:40

In your retrospective show Joy and People in 2012 there was a section called My Failures. Why did you want to include the ideas that didn't work?

Jeremy Deller25:48

You know, when you have a solo show like that, you're showing yourself at your absolute strongest, and it can be a bit pompous and almost arrogant in a way, and egotistical to do that. So I just felt I had to have something that punctured that sense of like I'm the all-powerful artist, and show that even if you can get a retrospective or you can win this prize or whatever, you're still going to be confounded by bureaucracy or by your idea or by something along the way. Having said that, some of those ideas have since actually happened.

Presenter26:19

Yes, I think Iggy Pop Life Drawing is one of those, isn't it?

Jeremy Deller26:21

It's one of those, isn't it? I approached Iggy Pop in like 2006 to be a life model, you know, fully naked life model, and he said no. And then I approached him again in 2015 or 16 and he said yes. Like ten years later, and he did this four hour life class, fully nude. And I asked him why didn't you want to do it ten years ago in when he was sort of fifty-nine or sixty? He said I was too young.

Jeremy Deller26:47

So we get this version of Iggy as l as a seventy year old man basically, with not the perfect body, but with a body that's still trying to be sort of this muscular figure. So it was a very interesting moment to catch him.

Presenter26:59

Do you ever worry that you'll run out of ideas?

Jeremy Deller27:02

Uh all the time I worry about I run out of ideas. You still worry a little bit but you're an imposter in this world and you'll be found out at any moment. Hopefully not before this goes out. But you know, I'll be carted off.

Presenter27:16

Let's have some more music. Tell me about your seventh disc today.

Jeremy Deller27:19

I bought a C D when I was in America in 2001 and I was listening to it with my students. It was of sort of folk music and field recordings, and this song came on and the atmosphere changed in the room when we heard it. Everyone just looked at each other. I couldn't believe it. Like it was a proper goose bumps moment because of what's said before and then what you hear with the beauty of the song and the ugliness of the politics around it. It's just something that you'd want to hear if you're on a desert island, you'd want to hear this sort of give you some kind of impetus to survive.

Presenter27:53

We shall overcome.

Speaker 128:09

Uh

Speaker 228:09

Please stop.

Presenter28:20

The Freedom Singers and We Shall Overcome. Jeremy Della, since you met Andy Warhol as a twenty year old, the British contemporary art world has changed beyond recognition. Today, of course, we've got tape modern, thriving galleries, globally successful homegrown artists. How do you view those changes and the health of the art scene?

Jeremy Deller28:38

Uh

Presenter28:38

I think it's

Jeremy Deller28:38

Good, isn't it? That there's more art in the world. And that the public really have taken it to their heart. I think for me that's the most important thing. I mean, the money thing is just annoying in a way, because it alienates the public when they think if they can only see something for the value of it, you don't see it for what it actually was meant for when the artist made it. But that's just annoying, and some of those artists are annoying as well. But on the whole, I think the public have taken it to their heart.

Presenter29:02

What would your life have been like if you hadn't become an artist?

Jeremy Deller29:05

My life would have been terrible.

Jeremy Deller29:07

I sometimes have nightmares thinking about what would happen to me.

Jeremy Deller29:10

I tried to work in a gallery once and it just didn't go very well at all.

Presenter29:14

You singed a Hockney, I believe.

Jeremy Deller29:15

I burnt a Hockney. I burnt a Hockney on the first morning of the first day that I was a technician.

Presenter29:20

And does one Bern Hockney just go to the middle of the morning?

Jeremy Deller29:22

Well, it had a sticker on the back, and the chief technician said, You've got to take this sticker off because there's an auction house sticker. I'll give you this thing. And it looked like a hair dryer, but it's actually a wallpaper stripper. I didn't realise this. So I did it really well, because it was literally the first thing I've been asked to do. Did an amazing job, and I turned the frame around, and I saw a big black mark on the print and condensation on the inside of the frame on the glass on the inside. I sort of dried it out and burnt it. And I just put it in the rack so I didn't tell anyone. And that's quite a good lesson, really, I think. If you do something really wrong like that, just don't tell anyone and just see what happens. And in a way, as an artist, you try not to ask permission to do certain things. You just do it, and then you see if you're allowed or not. My practical skills are literally of a sort of Laurel and Hardy standard. So I am a bit worried about this desert island.

Presenter30:12

Well, this is it. I mean, how do you think you're going to get on?

Jeremy Deller30:15

Badly. I don't like the sun on my face or my head. I find it really offensive. So I'm going to have to make a hat of some description. And I can't do things. This could be tricky. Can you cook?

Jeremy Deller30:26

No.

Jeremy Deller30:28

Even thinking about it now is worrying me, and I know it's not even real, so that's how bad it is.

Presenter30:32

How are you in your own company? Your retrospective was called Joy in People, I think. I mean, does that is that an insight into your.

Jeremy Deller30:37

It's that

Jeremy Deller30:39

Well, not really. I'm quite a grump really. But I I think there was a lot of joy in the work as well as frustration with people. You know, a lot of the time I don't really like being around people, they irritate me. So maybe I make work to make myself happier with the human race and with humanity and with people.

Presenter30:56

Let's take another track. This is your eighth disc today. Why have you chosen this one?

Jeremy Deller31:00

I saw Willie Nelson on the telly about 15 years ago doing Glastonbury, and something really sort of like clicked in my mind about him. It was like I was falling in love with Willie Nelson, I didn't realise at the time. And then about three or four years later, I got the opportunity to see him in San Francisco at the Fillmore. It was quite a small venue, and I was near the front. And I've never experienced so much love for someone in a room as a performer. And when I get a bit down, I literally put on this record and I look at pictures of bats to cheer me up.

Presenter31:32

Why bats? I mean, bats have come up a few times today, so I'm going to have to dig on that.

Jeremy Deller31:34

So I'm gonna have to

Jeremy Deller31:36

It's because bats are very clever. They can do all these things we can't as mammals. They live together in huge numbers. They're very good with their children.

Jeremy Deller31:47

The bat pictures I look at are these really very formal portraits of bats that I find online. And there's one bat that has its eyes in its ears. You know, things like that are just amazing looking creatures. I just find them very sweet.

Speaker 232:03

The Red-Headed Stranger from Blue Rock, Montana.

Speaker 232:08

Rode into town one day.

Speaker 232:13

And under his knee

Speaker 232:15

Was a raging black star

Presenter32:15

Raid

Speaker 232:18

Walking behind

Presenter32:18

Hi.

Speaker 232:19

And what Yeah.

Presenter32:22

Uh

Speaker 232:22

Red headed strong

Presenter32:23

Right.

Speaker 232:23

Angel. Had eyes like thunder

Presenter32:24

Had a housewife.

Presenter32:27

RED Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson. So Jeremy Deller, it's time to cast you away to our desert island. As you know, I'll give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read. You can also take a book of your own. What would you like that to be?

Jeremy Deller32:38

So

Jeremy Deller32:39

I would like an A to Z of London, because I would like to take journeys around my home town.

Jeremy Deller32:46

and look at roads I've never seen before and take these journeys around the outskirts of London, going into London and then travelling around it. So I could lose myself in that probably more than any other book.

Presenter32:57

And what about a luxury item? I'll let you have one of those.

Jeremy Deller32:59

Well

Jeremy Deller33:01

I'm stretching it, but there's a a road.

Jeremy Deller33:04

It goes from Hay on Wye to Abergavenny over Hay Bluff and through a valley which has a a priory, a ruined priory and ancient churches and I don't even know what the road's called, but I would like to take that road and the landscape of Wales with me as my luxury.

Presenter33:22

I think I can give you a stretch of roads. Can't stretch to a landscape.

Jeremy Deller33:27

Can I have the views from the road?

Presenter33:28

You could have the views.

Jeremy Deller33:30

Okay,'cause there is an amazing view of Wales from the top of Hay Bluff.

Presenter33:33

Okay, we'll give you that.

Presenter33:35

And if you had to choose just one track to save from the waves, which would it be?

Jeremy Deller33:39

It would be and it well, forever it would always be Roxy Music.

Presenter33:43

Jeremy Della, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Jeremy Deller33:46

Thank you.

Presenter34:00

While Jeremy savors the view from the Hay Bluff, I'll just tell you that we have many artists in our back catalogue, including Steve McQueen, Tracy Emin, Peter Blake, and Maggie Hambling. And you can hear all those and many more programs via the Desert Island Disc's website. As we've heard, Jeremy's art can't be described as traditional, and success was a long time coming, so it's not altogether surprising that his parents were sometimes confused by what he did, but they were extremely proud when he won the Turner Prize. In 2016, Yinka Shonabare talked to Kirstie about how his relatives regarded his artistic output.

Speaker 234:35

What have um your family over the years made of your art?

Speaker 134:39

It's kind of funny because uh in Nigeria, you know, i if it translates into dollars, then obviously there's something good about it, you know, particularly as I've been awarded a number of awards and honours and so on. So my parents very much recognized that, particularly when I received the um MBE. I mean my family are very approving of the royal family, so that was something that was liked very much.

Speaker 235:05

You didn't just embrace the MBE by accepting it, you also incorporated it into your name and the names of your exhibitions that you know, they became Yinka Shonibari MBE. Was your tongue in your cheek?

Speaker 135:17

When I was first awarded the MBE, a number of artists and others said, Oh, you know, you have to turn it down, you know, because of the history of empire and so on.

Speaker 235:24

And so on.

Speaker 135:25

And I felt that the British Empire is no longer threatening. I mean, I'm not naive enough to think that the legacy of empire is gone away. The legacy of empire is very much here, but empire is not as threatening as it was. And to create some kind of opposition or some kind of dichotomy I just felt was wrong. I felt that if you were honoured, you should not turn it down in that way. And I felt very much that it's important to actually make the point. So really accepting it is almost a way of asserting my own independence.

Speaker 236:08

Yes, so to reject it would have given it power.

Speaker 136:11

Absolutely. And also would have diminished me because it would have positioned me in opposition to something. And I'm not in opposition to anything. So I'm not on the opposite side of any argument. I'm always both. And actually after all, you know, I did enjoy being at the palace and I I guess I would describe myself as a rebel within.

Presenter36:33

Yinka Shonobare, and you can hear his Desert Island Discs and more than 2,000 others via the Desert Island Discs website. Next week, my guest will be the actor and writer Ruth Jones. I hope you can join us.