English Magic exhibition at The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery by Jeremy Deller

English Magic exhibition at The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery by Jeremy Deller

Posted on: 05 May 2014

Soldiers, birds, politicians, oligarchs, artists, war, prisoners and… David Bowie.

 

This is England, seen by Jeremy Deller. With the exhibition “English Magic”, the Turner prize winning artist brings to Bristol his particular (and political) interpretation of events and conflicts in the country, from the Victorian age to now.

 

Despite the title, as the artist himself admits, this articulate work based at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery until the 21st September 2014, and commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013, shows “the good magic and the bad magic of a country”, and includes a violent critique against government, but more generally against the universal human and political condition, and capitalism.

 

For this challenging work, Deller decided to use installations, paintings, drawings, photographs, and film, alongside historical materials and artefacts. He also decided to create a collective exhibition which comprehends portraits and drawings realized by other artists and very special “hosts”.

 

The first part, located in the ground floor of the museum, is focused on a metaphor between scrapers – which are filmed while they are destroying cars in a garage - and birds claws, the main characters of the second big mural of the exhibition: the work shows an enormous hen harrier clutching a red Range Rover. Even if “every room has a scene of destruction in it”, as the artist explains, the painting of the hen harrier is a response to allegations, made in 2007, that Prince Harry had shot two of the rare birds over the Sandringham Estate. Prince Harry and a friend were the only known people to be shooting that day in that area, but the case was dropped, as the birds bodies couldn’t be found. “We don’t know who pulled the trigger,” Deller told the BBC, “maybe it was a gamekeeper. But if you or I shot a hen harrier in Britain, we would go to prison for six months. So someone got away with it. And that bothered me”. The mural, ironically called “A good day for Cyclists” is an ideal revenge of the killed birds but also describes the apocalyptical vision of Deller about relationships between man and nature.  

 

In our opinion, one of the most shocking piece of the exhibition is R and R: soldiers smoking crack before deployment at Wellington Barracks, London. The picture, which is a simple drawing, nearly a sketch, has been realized by Neil, a man detained in the maximum security classification prison HMP Shotts. Near to that one, there is the drawing of a Soldier under a bed with his body armour and helmet on during a mortar attack at Basra Palace during the Iraq war in 2007.

 

Most of the portraits and sketches - like the one of Alastair Campbell, director of communication and strategy for the former prime minister Tony Blair, and the one of David Kelly, the former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq - had been drawn by amateurs and prisoners expressing their upset, rage, pain and resignation. Their strong evocative power is well supported by letters, statements and documents about the conflict against Saddam Hussein.

 

As strong as the previous, the critic against capitalism is well represented by the huge mural showing the Arts and Crafts main exponent William Morris. In the opera called We Sit Starving Amidst our Gold, the Victorian designer and Socialist League’s founder is compared to Poseidon, the mythological god of the oceans, ready to cast a yacht into the sea’s abyss. This yacht is not chosen by chance, but it is the property of the oligarch Roman Abramovich which, as Jeremy Deller declared, blocked the view beside the Giardini at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

 

Interpreting the different nature of British society and its cultural, social, folkloristic and economic history, Deller chose to insert a room dedicated to David Bowie, and especially to the 1972-1973 Ziggy Stardust Tour. The pictures of the “Thin White Duke” and his fans are alternated with the images of rioting and bomb damage in Northern Ireland. The emotional answer of the British population to the coming of Bowie is in clear contrast with the tension’s atmosphere in the pictures showing cities and quarters after attacks. But such as the exquisite plumage of the birds, the limitless landscapes and the Londoner parades, music, war and rebellion are integral parts of this country which contradictions are fully exhibited in Deller’s work.

 

Reviewed by Ilenia Appicciafuoco for 365Bristol.


Article by:

James Anderson

Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.