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| The 1950s architectural boondoggle never came to fruition, as you might have figured out by now, but Auriti spent three years making a 1:200 scale model of the behemoth, 2,322-foot-tall building. He built the replica in Pennsylvania and it sat in a warehouse for decades, before being gifted to the American Folk Art Museum. |
Overview.
"The Exhibition draws inspiration from
the model of a utopian dream by Marino Auriti who filed a design with
the U.S. Patent office in 1955, depicting his Palazzo Enciclopedico (The
Encyclopedic Palace), an imaginary museum that was meant to house all
worldly knowledge. Auriti created a model of a 136-story building to be
built in Washington D.C., which would stand seven hundred meters tall
and take up over sixteen square city blocks. “Auriti’s plan was never carried out,
of course – says Massimiliano Gioni - but the dream of a
universal, all-embracing knowledge crops up throughout the history of
art and humanity, as one that eccentrics like Auriti share with many
other artists, writers, scientists, and self-proclaimed prophets who
have tried — often in vain — to fashion an image of the world that will
capture its infinite variety and richness. Today, as we grapple with a
constant flood of information, such attempts seem even more necessary
and even more desperate.”
Jeremy Deller: British Magic
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| Entrance to Jeremy Deller's English Magic exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2013. Courtesy of the British Council Blog. Photo: Cristiano Corte |
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| Jeremy Deller, We Sit Starving Amidst Our Gold, British Pavilion, 2013. Courtesy British Council. Photograph Cristiano Corte. |
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| Jeremy Deller, St Helier on Fire (following a riot against Jersey’s status as a tax haven). Courtesy of the British Council Blog. Photo by Cristiano Corte |
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| Jeremy Deller, Tea Room at the British Pavilion, 2013. Courtesy of the British Council Blog. Photo by Cristiano Corte |
Emma Gifford-Mead, curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and exhibitions organiser for the British Council’s visual arts work, offers an insight into Jeremy Deller’s exhibition ‘English Magic’. Go to the British Council Blog
Collaboration. Gifford-Mead sites Deller's practice of collaborating with non-artists: "For the project in the British Pavilion, for example, the list of collaborators includes painters, musicians, archaeologists, a banner maker, music fans, students, car crushers, birds of prey and British ex-servicemen currently in prison." Culture and Identity. Gifford-Mead explains that the theme of the exhibition itself is broadly about British culture and national identity and covers "popular culture, music, tax evasion, accountability, history, arts and crafts, the military, prisons and the natural world. These themes are the foundation of Deller's practice but Giffird-Mead says, this is the first exhibition which presents these concerns together.
Adrian Searle, Art Critic for the Guardian writes that Jeremy Deller's British pavilion at Venice is about money and magic, heritage and horror. There is a lengthy video which his article captions as "exclusive" here.
Emine Saner, in the Guardian interviews Deller's collaborators "Trade union banners have been around since about 1830. British ones tend to be pictorial. They have this spiritual nature: the aspirations of the working person." Ed Hall, bannermaker
Charlotte Higgins tweeted "its angry, its touching, its fond" and said she ,"shead a tear". Higgins describes the work in her Guardian piece as "a kind of dark companion piece to last year's Olympics opening ceremony, but with anger and satire mingling with the fondness and celebration."
Bidoun Magazine's Sukhdev Sandhu interviews Deller: "at the Courtauld there were lots of people who were going to nightclubs — going to Taboo, all those classic clubs. So I went to a few of those. But I was always an outsider. I never really felt like a participant. "
For Deller in context - in the new edition of Kaleidoscope Magazine Laura McLean-Ferris traces the legacy of folk in British contemporary art from the exhibition Black Eyes and Lemonade to the practice of Jeremy Deller.
a-n art news describes Deller's mural We Sit Starving Amidst Our Gold Roman: "Abramovich’s yacht being thrust into the sea by a giant-sized depiction of the 19th century radical and writer William Morris."
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| A Good Day for Cyclists by Sarah Tynan, in Jeremy Deller's British pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Courtesy of the Guardian. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian |
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| Portrait by James Hutchinson. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise and Bidoun Magazine. |
