On Wednesday the 29th I visited the the Hayward Galery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, Greater London, with the college to look at the Jeremy Deller, Joy in people, and David Shrigley, Brain activity, exhibitions.
Jeremy Deller was born in London in 1966, he studied Art History at the Courtauld Institute and at Sussex University. He met Andy Warhol in 1986 and then began creating his own works in the late 1980s, often making fleeting and subversive interventions in everyday situations. In 1993, he learnt silkscreen printing and made a series of exhibition posters and editions. Jeremy Deller staged The Battle of Orgreave in 2001, bringing together almost 1,000 people in a public re-enactment of a violent confrontation between coalminers and police during the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike. In 2004 he was awarded the Turner Prize, dedicating it to ‘everyone who cycles in London, everyone who looks after wildlife and bats, the Quaker movement and everyone I’ve worked with.’ Since then, he has continued making collaborative and participatory works. In 2006, he was involved in a touring exhibit of contemporary British folk art, in collaboration with Alan Kane. In late 2006, he instigated The Bar House Project, an architectural competition open to the public for a bat house on the outskirts of London. In 2007, Jeremy Deller was appointed a trustee of the Tate Gallery.
Pieces or work I liked
Jeremy Deller was displaying this piece of work in his exhibition. It was called ‘It is what it is’, it is a car that was blown up in Baghdad on March 5th, 2007. It is a terrible relic and a metaphor, a stand-in for the thirty-five people who were killed by the suicide bomb that also destroyed the car. The reason why I like this piece of work is because for the story it tells and the fact it is being used as a memorial to the thirty-five people that died. It is also an eye-opener to the public about the destruction and wars that are happening around the world.
David Shrigley was exhibiting this piece or work which was called ‘Insects’. There are hundreds of insects assembled in different shaped and sizes created with pieces of metal. I like this work because it shows some of the insects to be sociable creatures, while others are individuals. All are carrying out different activities and interact with each other in different ways. Hanging above this world of insects is an ominous black sun or planet, which lends itself for the reason for the scattering amongst them and there are these hair-ball objects which are quite unsettling.
Pieces of work I did not like
This is a replica of the ‘Open bedroom’ of Jeremy Deller in 1993. This is a replica of an exhibition he did in his room when he was still living with his parents in his mid-20s, and he had to use his bedroom as his work studio. The reason why I did not like it was because it was filled with images that I thought were not relevant to what my project was about and also I did not understand why the Union Jack flag had Suburbia written on it.
This is ‘Everyday life’ done by David Shrigley, his three-dimensional works are often curious and created by transforming everyday objects or playing with scale, as in the display of shiny ceramic boots. The reason why I did not like this piece of work is because I am more interested in visual designs that look interesting and weird and in my opinion there was nothing special about this, they were just boots.
Conclusion of the exhibition
Overall I thought the exhibition was really good because there was lots of information about the individual artists and you found out how they started doing what they do. Their pieces of work were well laid out and presented which enables you to get a really good view of each individual piece. There were also different tasks we had to complete which were, a sketch of the snack bar onto a postcard, write a notice on a piece of paper to then stick on a notice board, label a map of England with real or fake landmarks and emboss our exhibition guide with some stamps.
I ended up enjoying my visit to the Hayward Gallery because some of the pieces of work were interesting and got your mind thinking about why something’s were done in a certain way and there was a mixture of videos, pictures, sculptures and animations located around the gallery.
The exhibition was relevant to the exam theme ‘Combination & Alliance’ because the two artists shared a similar style of work because they both were done in a weird quirky style. The way Davis Shrigley used imagery and text gave me some ideas of my own that I could use for my final outcome because I will be designing a DVD cover which will involve a mixture of images and text.
My Trip Pictures
