Collaborative, transitory and sometimes site-specific, the work of Jeremy Deller (London, England, 1966) gives rise to unheard-of readings of reality. By invoking a collective creative power, the artist conceives projects that directly confront the status quo of the artistic field and the sacredness and inviolability of social codes and political, economic, media and religious powers.

Collaboration is fundamental to this artistic practice, which, in its various guises, tries to get closer to the public, involve them, and make them part of the conception of certain works. A supporter of the idea of the “democratisation” of the work of art, Jeremy Deller dissolves the artist-public hierarchy and has a forthright approach to the themes he tackles — even though he comes close to conceptual art by working from “an idea” in search of “seeing what happens”. Impossible to categorise within the limited parameters of an artistic discipline, his work permeates a wide range of media, from painting to happening. He builds relationships between popular culture, history, political and social events, the present, the past and hypothetical futures while adding an irreverent “filter” to them.

Speak to the Earth and it will tell you, 2024

Banner, stitched letters on cotton

With the collaboration of Ed Hall

Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow

Speak to the Earth and it will tell you originates from a question the artist posed to the staff of the Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra. Which six of the recently extinct botanical species do you miss the most? As if in a spectral return, a banner reading the scientific names occupies the place once inhabited by these species. Jeremy Deller’s intervention in the Botanical Garden is in line with his ongoing language-focused practice and, at the same time, with the phrase that gives the work its title, invokes a paradoxically humorous and patronising biblical sense. Speak to the Earth and it will tell you challenges the viewer as an enigmatic presence in space that, while arousing playful curiosity, points to an environmental future that deprives our horizon of hope.