As part of the summer contemporary art event Exporama, the Musée des beaux-arts, La Criée centre d’art contemporain and the Frac Bretagne are joining forces for the first retrospective in France devoted to the British artist Jeremy Deller.
Born in London in 1966, Jeremy Deller has been developing a practice since the 1990s that moves mischievously between conceptual art, performance, installation and video. He was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, and represented Britain at the Venice International Art Biennale in 2013. Firmly anchored in the reality of social and political issues, his approach overturns the status of the creative artist, since he openly proclaims that he prefers “working with people rather than things”. Thus, he delegates all or part of the creative process to all sorts of people – workers, amateur practitioners, extravagant inventors, children, fans of rock n’ roll or pop music…
Humour and popular counter-culture
With each experience, he humorously reaffirms his immense capacity for wonder for popular counter-cultures, anonymous inventiveness and the insurrectionary force of the people. This retrospective resonates with the exhibition Forever sixties from the Pinault Collection at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes, which explores the spirit of the 1960s that swung between liberation and repression, and reveals the Pop art side of this prestigious collection.
A retrospective in three universes
The National Gallery presents a panorama of its creation since the 2000s, with exhibits that combine performance, video and installation. The works Valerie’s snack bar and Speak to the earth and it will tell you explore what cements solidarity and complicity between inhabitants – the famous ‘social bond’. The Battle of Orgreave and Putin’s happy offer themselves as investigative tools for questioning political struggles and their media treatment, from Thatcherite-era social conflicts to the more recent Brexit debates.
We find this inscription in history – political, social, art… – at La Criée centre d’art contemporain, with Warning Graphic Content, a collection of over 100 printed works and posters by Jeremy Deller from 1993 to 2021. In the slide show Beyond the White Wall, Jeremy Deller recounts, in a voice-over, the projects he has carried out in public space that blur the boundaries between art and social space.
The exhibition at Frac Bretagne presents Jeremy Deller as the great observer of vernacular culture in the UK. Bringing together drawing, painting, film, performance, costume, decoration, political opinion and humour, as well as amazing objects, Folk Archive (2005 with Alan Kane) celebrates the activity of a wide range of British pastimes and activities, and demonstrates that folk art in Britain is both widespread and vigorous. Alongside this installation, three film works also deal with popular cultural appropriation: English Magic (2013), Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 (2018) and Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (2006, with Nick Abraham).
PRACTICAL INFORMATION :
- Venues & times :
- Musée des beaux-arts, 20 quai Emile Zola. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm. Closed on Mondays.
- La Criée centre d’art contemporain, Place Honoré Commeurec. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 1pm to 7pm. Closed on Mondays.
- Frac Bretagne, 19 avenue André Mussat. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 12pm to 7pm. Closed on Mondays.
- Prices :
- Joint ticket giving access to the “Forever sixties” exhibition (Couvent des Jacobins) and to the “Art is Magic” exhibition (Musée des beaux-arts, la Criée, Frac Bretagne).
- Full price: €12 | Reduced rate: €7 (Members of SAMBAR and the association of friends of the Frac) | Free for: young people under 26, disabled people and their companions, holders of the Sortir! scheme, holders of minimum social benefits and jobseekers, professionals with the ICOM card, the Culture card, the exhibition curators’ card, holders of the press card, members of the Collection Pinault membership, and young people with the “super cercle” card.
- Ticket sales from April 2023.