Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Deller (b. 1966) is a British artist, 2004 winner of the Turner Prize, and media polymath, whose incursions into theater, film, music, political actions, environmentalism, archaeology, and many contemporary forms of cultural production are dazzlingly diverse. His tender eye towards popular likes and tastes, his deep belief in egalitarianism, his keen ear for the music of our time, mark a varied and always mesmerizing practice. For the collaboration with Agricola Due Leoni, Deller has fused a prior multiple edition celebrating a specific alternative dance music genre, with a general blessing of extra virgin olive oil, once the realm of alternative food culture.

Jeremy Deller staged a popular parade in the streets of San Sebastian, Spain, for the 2004 edition of Manifesta. Cornelia attended this event and briefly met the artist, who was then introduced to her formally through colleagues at BookWorks, London. She once asked Deller if he liked Duran-Duran, and he demurred. Similar musical taste is a common denominator among many artists. The idea of taking a popular slogan of Deller’s, lifted from popular sentiment, and applying it, with pink background, to a can of olive oil, and then adding a blessing on a substance once used for lighting holy lamps--there seems to be a strange symmetry. It works.