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Desert Island Discs

Jeremy Deller, artist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.413.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2019

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller is perhaps best known for We’re Here Because We’re Here, a moving and powerful memorial to the Battle of the Somme, and The Battle of Orgreave – a re-enactment of the confrontation between police and pickets at the height of the miners’ strike. Deller doesn’t paint, draw or sculpt and his work encompasses film, photography and installations. At school his creative endeavours were not always appreciated, and at 13 he was asked to leave the art class. His lifelong love of history was ignited by childhood trips to museums with his father, and is evident in the subjects he addresses, from Stonehenge, which he re-created as a giant bouncy castle, to William Morris. He managed to meet Andy Warhol in London in 1986 and went to spend two formative weeks at Warhol’s New York City studio, the Factory. The experience crystallised in Deller the belief that art can come in many forms and that an artist can create their own world of ideas. His memorial to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre will be unveiled in August 2019. BOOK CHOICE: An A to Z London Street Atlas LUXURY: A stretch of road over Hay Bluff between Hay-on-Wye and Abergavenny. CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Out of the Blue by Roxy Music. Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.

0:04.7

Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.

0:08.8

Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.

0:11.2

Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.

0:15.0

It's in the hands of the creator.

0:16.7

It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.

0:20.7

If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.

0:26.0

Julie, at your service, listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:35.8

Hello, I'm Lauren Levern and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.

0:39.7

Every week I ask my guest to choose the Eight Tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with

0:44.6

them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons the music is shorter

0:50.0

than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. Oh, My castaway this week is the artist Jeremy Della. A Turner Prize winner he is equally

1:20.3

unconventional and influential. He doesn't paint, draw or sculpt. His art

1:25.2

includes installations, film, photography and what he calls cultural interventions.

1:30.3

In July 2016, Passes By were astonished when hundreds of World War One soldiers appeared, unannounced, at railway stations, bus stops and shopping centres, from Plymouth to Shetland.

1:42.0

This was a powerful Jeremy Della Memorial to the Battle of the Somme.

1:47.0

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 Orgrieve.

1:58.0

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.

2:08.0

There were early clues that he would become an artist who does things differently.

2:12.0

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

2:25.4

temper. My art is my way of losing my temper. I get everything out through that. I

2:29.7

only hope his mom, who had to repaint the kitchen after the locust incident shares that

...

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