Art Is Magic: a children's book for adults by

Product Information

If the giant free festival and rave at ‘Castlemorton’ in 1992 led directly to the bringing of the Criminal Justice Bill to the statute book – in such a way that codified the particular dissent exemplified by the way of life that Acid House stood for – so did the 1984–5 miners’ strike exemplify the response to the Conservative Party’s aim to close the coal pits and smash union power; a response that could also be measured by the survival of brass bands at a time that the pits were closing. In a sense this work and, by extension, Acid Brass, also act as a direct overture to the event The Battle of Orgreave 2001 (a re-enactment of a particularly pivotal clash between the striking miners and the police during the 1984–5 miners’ strike), which Deller had earlier called, in a 1994 poster work, The English Civil War (part 2), and the subsequent The Battle of Orgreave Archive (An Injury to One is an Injury to All) 2004 ( T12185). When his proposal was rejected he instead toured the car around the USA in the company of an Iraqi citizen and an American soldier I turned off online comments as they seemed to be getting out of hand, though I wish I had taken screenshots of this billionaire pile-on. I actually felt a bit sorry for them, trying to gain some sympathy for themselves from the situation. Little did the Murdochs know that, later that year, I had a work in the pipes where a likeness of Bad Grandpa and Uncle Lachlan would literally be burned. The whole process was kept a secret because of the reach of the Murdoch press in Australia Jeremy Deller’sThe Battle of Orgreave, staged seventeen years later, was a spectacular re-enactment of what happened on that day. It was orchestrated by Howard Giles, a historical re-enactment expert and the former director of English Heritage’s event programme. More than 800 people participated in the re-enactment, many of them former miners, and a few former policemen, reliving the events from 1984 that they themselves took part in. Other participants were drawn from battle re-enactment societies across England. Jeremy Deller's reenactment of the 1984 clash between striking miners and police at Orgreave in South Yorkshire on 17 June 2001 was filmed by Mike Figgis for Artangel Media and Channel 4, and aired on Sunday, 20 October 2002.

Jeremy Deller proposed his project to Artangel via the Open competition that we launched with The Times and the A4E National Lottery scheme. For the first time Artangel opened its doors to proposals from artists, rather than identifying projects through invitation and discussion. Some 700 ideas came in and Rachel Whiteread, Brian Eno and Richard Cork joined James Lingwood and myself to select a pair of projects to a commission and produce. Deller describes the photograph as an act of revenge by Street on his father and the workmates who bullied him when he worked as a miner in his youth. “He decided to be photographed in the place he hated most to show those people what he had made of himself.” As is his wont, Deller also sees it as a prophetic image, almost Blakean in its resonance. “He’s showing the future to the past, his own past and Britain’s past. He’s basically saying to these older guys, ‘It’s over for you, because everything is becoming showbiz, entertainment and service industries. And that’s what I am!’ It’s like a modern equivalent of Blake’s Jerusalem where someone arrives on a golden chariot during the Industrial Revolution to proclaim the future.” A strange alliance of medieval, ancient Greek and even American civil war enthusiasts abandoned their favourite eras yesterday to relive one of the greatest symbolic moments of modern industrial struggle. Lined up on a Yorkshire hillside, long-haired members of a 17th century Cavalier regiment turned into striking miners for a day of noisy clashes with rival amateur actors who had swapped Confederate forage caps for the visors of 1980s riot police. – Martin Wainwright,TheGuardian, 18 June 2001 .

Pulling together all Deller’s cultural touchstones – from acid house and brass bands to crop circles and folk traditions – and featuring conversations between the artist and an eclectic mix of cultural figures and collaborators, from fashion provocateur Sportsbanger to classicist Mary Beard, Art is Magic offers an unpredictable and exhilarating tour of a unique mind. Along with a bunch of other artists, I was invited in 2019 to make a limited-edition print to be sold to raise funds for a charity to help the human and non-human victims of the fires. I made an image of Lachlan Murdoch’s villa in Sydney being consumed by a bushfire. Hardly subtle, but to the point. It was printed on a textured grey metallic paper to give it a painterly feel.

A work Higgins says she particularly enjoyed was Sacrilege, a co-commission between Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and the Mayor of London, consisting of an inflatable version of Stonehenge for people to bounce on. It appeared in Glasgow in 2012.

RA newsletter sign-up

Deller’s greatest work has taken place beyond gallery walls. Think of The Battle of Orgreave (2001), a 1000-person re-enactment of a clash between police and striking miners in 1984, for which Deller recruited a cast of ex-miners and battle re-enactors. Or We’re Here Because We’re Here (2016), his First World War memorial work, in which 1,400 young men in authentic military uniforms appeared, unheralded and unexplained, in public spaces around the UK on 1 July, the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. He wanted them to be in high-visibility locations, on roundabouts, near motorways, at railway stations. They didn’t approach people; if people came up to them they did not speak but instead handed them one of 19,000 cards with the name and details of a (regionally specific) soldier who had died on the first day of the battle. Deller spoke to every one of the participants, and gave talks about the project around the country To illustrate rave culture he showed footage of people trying to get to Stonehenge and being handcuffed by police. He also included the reactions of some passers-by, and says he was as surprised as the pupils to find that older people, far from being outraged at the ravers, were disgusted by the police Just saying ​ ‘rage’ and ​ ‘rave’, they’re two very similar words. Rave came out of ahorrible moment in history for young people, but it was avery necessary moment. As were the drugs, really – it was necessary drugs that made many people like each other.”

I’m glad you’re not an historian’ says Higgins, ‘because you make history so much more interesting.’ Jeremy Deller at EIBF: (c) Robin Mair The History of the World is a graphic and textual portrayal of the history, influence and context for acid house and brass band music. Adopting the form of a flow diagram, it suggests that there are social and political echoes and points of confluence between these two musical movements that date from different eras; acid house being a post-industrial movement of the late twentieth century, and the brass band movement dating from the industrial era of the nineteenth century.

Ghosts shows the Globe shouldn't always stick to Shakespeare

Higgins was one of only two journalists – and the only woman – invited to the rehearsals for Deller’s We’re Here Because We’re Here project. His plan was to have men dressed as World War One soldiers to appear unannounced, With so many works to consider, there’s one piece that Deller is particularly proud of. Baghdad centred on acar damaged by the Al-Mutanabbi Street bombing in 2007, looking more like alarge scrap piece of metal than afour-wheeler. Asobering reminder of the 26 people who were killed by the bomb, Deller took the car on a2009 nationwide tour of America, before bringing it to the UK, where it currently sits at the Imperial War Museum. I put myself and other people who were doing that at great personal risk. I mean, how would you know what the reaction would be to that in the Deep South? On the first day we started, we were in a campervan, towing the car, and the American soldier and the Iraqi civilian – both of whom had been in life threatening situations – looked really nervous. And I thought, ‘If you’re worried, then I should be really worried because you’ve been in war situations.’ But actually, on the whole, it was amazing to meet Americans face to face, without any of the fluff or hype around it, and just chat to them.”