This Cultural Life

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives.

In-depth conversations with some of the world's leading artists and creatives across theatre, visual arts, music, dance, film and more. Hosted by John Wilson.

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This Cultural Life: Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Deller

BBC Radio 4 - This Cultural Life, Jeremy Deller

Artist Jeremy Deller discusses his career and creative influences with John Wilson.

Award-winning artist Jeremy Deller discusses his career and creative influences with John Wilson.

Winner of the Turner Prize in 2004 and Britain’s official representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Jeremy Deller is an unconventional artist whose work is as likely to be seen in streets or fields as in museums and galleries. In his work The Battle of Orgreave he restaged a modern civil conflict; a clash between striking miners and police officers. He persuaded a traditional brass band to play Acid House tunes in his work Acid Brass. Perhaps most memorably, on the centenary of the first day of the Battle of they Somme he conjured ghostly platoons of young soldiers all around the UK in his work We’re Here because We’re Here.

Jeremy talks to John Wilson about some of his most formative creative influences. Seeing The Who's rock musical film Tommy as a teenager was an unforgettable experience that revealed to him the power of imaginative vision.  A chance encounter with one of his artist heroes Francis Bacon strengthened his interest in art history, and time spent with Andy Warhol in New York encouraged him to think of art as multi-dimensional and unlimited. He also recounts how P J Harvey's album Let England Shake and the play Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth crystallised ideas he was forming about notions of Englishness which he used in both his work at the British pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and his work to mark the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

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