In extracts from his new book, the Turner prize-winning artist reflects on three of his best known works: a re-enactment of the miners’ 1984 clash with riot police, an inflatable Stonehenge and a burning sculpture of the Murdochs
The Battle of Orgreave, 2001
For someone who tries to avoid confrontation and large groups of males, I certainly make a lot of work with these elements. The Battle of Orgreave, is the most extreme example. A 1,000-person reenactment of a confrontation between police and striking miners from the 1984-85 strike.
On a sunny day in June 1984, police and picketing miners ended up in a pitched battle outside the coking plant at Orgreave, near Sheffield. I experienced the miners’ strike of 1984-85 through television news reports while I was at school in London. The footage from that day looked more like a medieval battle than a labour dispute, as mounted police pursued miners up a hill and down a steep railway cutting.
In 1994, I made a poster about a reenactment of the battle. It was a semi-serious idea at that point – an attempt to see if there was a way to look at the strike and that confrontation as part of the canon of battles on British soil. I thought the form of a battle reenactment might just be an effective way to do this, as we in the UK are so used to this type of historical display. There was an absurdity built into the idea, not least because it taps into the national obsession with history and conflict to the point where, based on the way we talk about it, you’d think the second world war had finished only last week.
When the former miners realised that the reenactors playing the police were unnerved by them, they played up to itThe event was commissioned by Artangel, formerly responsible for such projects as Rachel Whiteread’s House and Michael Landy’s Break Down. The research process took about two years and consisted of travelling up to the area and talking to people who had been involved in the strike. We recruited former miners from towns and villages within a 30-mile radius of Orgreave: Barnsley, Doncaster, Sheffield, Rotherham. These meetings started off being low-key, often one-to-one in a pub or in somebody’s home. The scale of these conversations gradually increased, until just before the event itself when I was meeting 50 or more former miners at a time.
With its sometimes-uneasy mixture of war and amateur dramatics, historical re-enactment interested me. As part of my research, I went to “History in Action”, a large, multi-period reenactment event. At the end of the weekend, the different societies perform a snaking march past, saluting each other in a bizarre celebration of the history of warfare. Then all the societies convene in a field and fight each other, in a total collapse of time. It gave me an insight into their approach to history. Vikings on top of second world war soldiers attacking English civil war cavaliers, who in turn are attacked by a band of marauding Celts. Two thousand years of history fighting itself.
A key figure in bringing the project to life was Howard Giles, who had close ties to reenactment societies in his former role at English Heritage and worked as our recruiter. Howard stressed to the participants that it was a non-political event – which it wasn’t, of course, in my mind, although I suppose it depends on how you define those things. As preparation for the event, we went to a police training centre in Cheshire, where a former driving-test compound was used to work through riot strategy – arresting people from within mobs, dealing with molotov cocktails and suchlike. We hired some staff from this centre to help train those taking part on the day. The reenactors loved being around the serving policemen. They were also fascinated by the practices of the riot police, whose techniques were probably familiar from ancient history – most notably, the continued use of shield formations and horses to break up crowds.
On the rehearsal day, we ran out of time, the weather was terrible, and I nearly got trampled on by the reenactor police horses. The human reenactors on the whole were wary of the ex-miners who were taking part, a tension built up as some of them voiced concerns that the event could easily turn into a real riot. In the end this did not happen, but the reenactors were quite taken aback by the intensity the former miners brought to their roles – not that surprising, really. When the former miners realised that the reenactors were unnerved by them, they played up to it, adding to the overall drama. They were playing versions of their younger selves on the actual site of the riot, and this odd piece of time travelling inevitably heightened emotions.
The reenactment was a public event, which was important for me as a form of public enquiry or, more viscerally, an autopsy of an exhumed corpse. Or even possibly as a reenactment of a crime in its original setting. Whatever it was, it was always, in my mind at least, performance art. It was never meant to heal community wounds – however much art is heralded as being capable of achieving this. If anything, it was intended to make people angry again.
I just thought something should happen there at that place as a memorial of sorts.
Orgreave was out of step with most of what was going on at the time in an art world in the midst of a boom in the market and gushing media attention. It could not have been more different: it was unglamorous, taking place on a windy field near Sheffield where thousands of men fought each other over a trade union dispute. Some people in London were horrified by the idea. This was not the response I received in Yorkshire.
Sacrilege, 2012
Just as science fiction is as much about the present as the future, so archaeology is as much about the present as the past. A month doesn’t go by in the UK without some discovery about Stonehenge being made that supposedly widens our understanding of it and so, by association, ourselves. It is a national mirror that reflects whatever it is we are concerned about at the time. And, like many neolithic sites, we still feel drawn to them. They still function as sites of pilgrimage. Tourism, especially in the age of social media, is a form of pilgrimage. We’ll never know what happened there for sure unless we master time travel.
This speculation is nevertheless a national pastime. We also look to Stonehenge to somehow unlock the secrets of life and the cosmos itself. But, of course, Stonehenge is entirely mute even though we ask a lot of it, as we project our thoughts about ourselves and the world onto it. The stress and obsessions of society are encapsulated in the debate around Stonehenge, sometimes at the site itself. In the 1980s, the moral panic around the traveller movement and, by association, land ownership, was publicly played out there.
While Stonehenge is the most recognisable structure in the UK, it remains an enduring mystery. For our national identity to be a bit of mystery is no bad thing, as it gives the public space to make up their own versions of who they are. The idea of multiple interpretations of a place and history goes against the instincts of nationalism and authoritarianism, where countries have their sacred founding myths that cannot be interfered with.
A country or institution that can’t laugh at itself is in trouble. Sacrilege was my attempt to help with this situationIt was from these thoughts that Sacrilege, a life-sized inflatable model of Stonehenge, was created. I was trying to think what the stupidest idea that was possible to make would be, the sort of thing you might see on The Simpsons. It was made more or less by hand in Grantham by a company called Inflatable World Leisure. The inflatable stones were all individually painted.
It was first inflated in Glasgow in 2012, before being absorbed into the Olympic cultural celebrations. It toured the UK, and later went abroad, where it was hammered by typhoons in Hong Kong and a heatwave in Australia. I liked the idea of Stonehenge touring – turning up in your local park unannounced, then disappearing after a day, becoming a part of folk memory. The Olympic movement can be so pompous, taking itself so seriously with all these weird rituals and hierarchies, a bit like a religion. A country or institution that can’t laugh at itself is in trouble, and Sacrilege was my attempt to help with this situation. It allowed you to bounce about and fall over a founding myth.
A lot of archaeologists appreciate the more unconventional groups who are drawn to the stones. In 2018, I was asked to help orchestrate a weekend of events at Stonehenge to celebrate the 100th anniversary of it being in public ownership. Sacrilege was set up for the occasion, near the visitor centre. A small group of druids conducted a ceremony of thanks. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved by their ritual, but it felt sincere, not theatrical in any way. After all, what the druids believe is no more made up than the beliefs of any other religion.
Father and Son, 2021
Throughout 2019 and 2020, large parts of Australia were destroyed by a number of bushfires: Forty-six million acres of land were burned and it is estimated that up to 3 billion animals were displaced or killed. The Murdoch media in the country had initially attempted to ignore the story. When it became clear that they couldn’t, they were happy to repeat accusations that environmentalists had started the fires.
Along with a bunch of other artists, I was invited in 2019 to make a limited-edition print to be sold to raise funds for a charity to help the human and non-human victims of the fires. I made an image of Lachlan Murdoch’s villa in Sydney being consumed by a bushfire. Hardly subtle, but to the point. It was printed on a textured grey metallic paper to give it a painterly feel.
I put an image of it on Instagram, and very soon was getting messages from outraged Murdoch family members. Some of Rupert Murdoch’s grandchildren were very angry with me. Their main complaint was that Lachlan’s kids might be in the house. To reiterate: this was a print. Despite (or maybe because of) their riches they seemed to be incapable of understanding the difference between a 2D print and the real world.
I turned off online comments as they seemed to be getting out of hand, though I wish I had taken screenshots of this billionaire pile-on. I actually felt a bit sorry for them, trying to gain some sympathy for themselves from the situation. Little did the Murdochs know that, later that year, I had a work in the pipes where a likeness of Bad Grandpa and Uncle Lachlan would literally be burned.
The whole process was kept a secret because of the reach of the Murdoch press in AustraliaI had been asked to make a work for the Melbourne festival and, with the bushfires uppermost on people’s minds, I suggested a sculpture of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch which destroys itself over a period of time, not dissimilar to a sacrifice or offering of some sort. I wanted it to have all the violence and beauty of a religious artwork, like Spanish polychrome sculpture.
It quickly became apparent that candle wax would be the best material to work with, as opposed to ice or a sort of effigy. Wax would take time to burn, would create interesting shapes as it melted, and has clear ecclesiastical resonances. We had to create a 3D model of Rupert and Lachlan from 2D images of them.
The candles were made in Australia from moulds, and great care was taken not just with their likenesses but also with details such as their shoes and their gait. Cumulatively, I hoped these almost-imperceptible details would add up to something convincing, uncanny even.
The whole process happened remotely, during lockdown. It was kept a secret because of the reach of the Murdoch press in Australia, particularly in Melbourne, where Rupert was born.
Government advice to stay at home [because of Covid] delayed the burning several times. It was, however, eventually shown on the first weekend after a 262-day lockdown, so became a thanksgiving event of sorts for the lifting (albeit partial) of Covid restrictions.
The venue for the event was a deconsecrated church with very understanding hosts. The Murdochs burned for 12 hours. By the end, Lachlan’s face had fallen off. Rupert’s stayed on, but now bowed slightly.
Although I didn’t see the work in person, I watched a bit online and spent the day in the knowledge that an odd and foolhardy event was taking place simultaneously on the other side of the world. The detritus has since been melted down and recycled.
Mini versions were produced to pay for the inevitable overspend, giving the public the opportunity to burn their own rightwing chaos merchants at their leisure.
Art Is Magic by Jeremy Deller is published by Cheerio (£30). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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