CURA.

The exhibition at the Rennes Museum of Art gives an overview of Deller’s creative output since the 2000s with work combining performative art, video and installation. Valerie’s Snack Bar and Speak to the Earth and It Will Tell You explore the ties that bind people together — the much-vaunted “social cohesion”. The Battle of Orgreave and Putin’s Happy are presented as tools for investigating and examining political struggle and its treatment by the media, from the social conflict of the Thatcher years to the more recent debates about Brexit.

This historical context — political, social and artistic — is also in evidence at La Criée Centre of Contemporary Art with Warning Graphic Content, a collection of Deller’s poster and print work from 1993 to 2021 that features over 100 pieces. In direct response, the voice-over in Deller’s slideshow Beyond the White Wall recounts his projects undertaken in the public space that blur the boundaries between the space of art and the social space.

The exhibition at Frac Bretagne presents Deller as the great observer of vernacular culture in the United Kingdom. Folk Archive (2005 with Alan Kane) combines drawing, painting, film, performative art, costume, decoration, political opinions and humour alongside some surprising objects. The work celebrates a vast range of British pastimes and pursuits, demonstrating that folk art in Britain is widespread and in good health. As a counterpart to this installation, three films address the appropriation of popular culture: English Magic (2013), Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992(2018) and Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (2006, with Nick Abraham).