Lizzie Carey-Thomas is Curator, Contemporsary British Art, Tate Britain. She wrote an illustrated essay on Jeremy Deller for the catalogue for the Turner Prize exhibition of 2004, held at Tate Britain, 20 October - 23 December 2004.
Along with Kutlug Ataman, Langlands & Bell, and Yinka Shonibare, Jeremy Deller was shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2004. The jury consisted of Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate, and Chairman of the Jury, Catherine David, Director of Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Adrian Searle, Art Critic, The Guardian, Robert Taylor, Representative of the Patrons of New Art, and David Thorp, Curator, Contemporary Projects, Henry Moore Foundation. The award was, in due course, made to Deller, for “Memory Bucket, a mixed media installation at Art Pace, San Antonio, documenting his travels through the state of Texas. This continued Deller’s personal investigation of the social and cultural make-up that defines different societies.”
Ataman was shortlisted for “his poignant and incisive video installations which describe the lives of individuals, creating intimate portraits while addressing broader social concerns, as shown at the Istanbul Biennial and other European venues.” Langlands & Bell were shortlisted “For The House of Osama bin Laden, an exhibition first shown at the Imperial War Museum, London, featuring photographs, digital animations and video works made following their visit to Afghanistan, which extended their interest in buildings, their histories and how we relate to them.” Shonibare (described in the catalogue essay as considering “himself ‘truly bi-cultural’) was shortlisted “For his sculptural installations in which he continues to use African fabric to subvert conventional readings of cultural identity, as seen in his exhibition Double Dutch at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and in his solo show at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.”
All the above quotes come from the introduction to the Turner Prize catalogue, which also contained introductions - both written and visual - to these artists’ work.
Lizzie Carey-Thomas curated Migrations: Journeys into British Art, an important exhibition that took place at Tate Britain in 2012, and included the work of some seventy artists. The exhibition proposed the view that for the past 5 centuries or so, Britain itself has been shaped by successive waves of migration, from Europe, from the Caribbean, from Asia, and other parts of the world. Furthermore, that what we know as, or consider to be, British art has itself been similarly shaped. The exhibition proposed, or prompted, the question, What is British Art? It proposed that audiences consider that those genres thought of as most typically British, such as landscape painting, were in actuality introduced by artists who had themselves migrated to Britain from other countries. Foreign-born artists frequently secured lucrative commissions and many became, in effect, not just British artists, but Britain’s artists. A combination of European painters, steeped in an academic tradition, and British artists who travelled to study in Italy between them helped to introduce a neoclassical vocabulary into British painting. Much later, from the mid 1800s onwards, a transatlantic dialogue developed between British artists and American artists such as James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. Throughout periods of history, Paris existed as both a magnet for artists . Simultaneously, French artists such as Henri Fantin-Latour and Alphonse Legros were regular visitors to England.
Fittingly, artists from the first ever diaspora – the Jewish diaspora - figured prominently in the Migrations exhibition, and a significant number of early twentieth century artists, including David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein and Mark Gertler figure in the history of British art. These influential practitioners were joined by a number of established artists included Naum Gabo, Oskar Kokoschka, Piet Mondrian and Kurt Schwitters. This latter group were among the refugees from the rise of Nazism and Fascism in Europe in the 1930s. Within just a few years of this (indeed, even before this wave of refugee artists) artists were making their way to Britain from countries in the former British Empire such as Guyana, India, Pakistan and Jamaica. Such artists included Ronald Moody, Frank Bowling, Rasheed Araeen and Aubrey Williams. The story of successive periods of migration influencing British art continued in the 1970s with the decidedly international rise of conceptual art involving an intriguing group of artists such as David Medalla, David Lamelas and Gustav Metzger. These artists were both international in their approach to their own practice as well their approach to their own identities. Towards the final, and most recent chapters of the Migrations story, the politically and socially charged climate of the 1980s gave birth to a compelling and dynamic range of visual art aligned to social commentary, in the work of Black Audio Film Collective, Keith Piper, Sonia Boyce, and Donald Rodney. The work of these artists effectively explored the duality and the nuances of being both ‘Black’ and ‘British’.
The final sections of Migrations reflected the present-day nature of London and other parts of the UK as an international destination of choice for artists from across the globe; the other side of a process that has seen British artists seek to establish themselves in other parts of the world. This dual process has created a fascinating cultural space characterised by a constant process of reinvention and change. Reflective of this, artists such as Peter Doig, Steve McQueen, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tris Vonna Michell networked globally with a speed and effectiveness enabled by plentiful travel opportunities and advances in technological communications. Migrations: Journeys into British Art secured a considerable amount of press coverage from a variety of newspapers, magazines and journals. The exhibition came with a sizeable catalogue that included artists’ interviews, and texts by curators and critics. The catalogue was extensively illustrated. Within the exhibition itself, a timeline charted the pluralising of British art, over a period of several centuries. Although not the first project of its kind, Migrations told a compelling story of the vital part migration, and the migration of artists, has played in the shaping of what we know as British art and culture.
The exhibition was divided into a number of sections: Portraiture and New Genres; Italy, Neoclassicism and the Royal Academy; Dialogues between Britain, France and America; Jewish Artists and Jewish Art; Refugees from Nazi Europe; Artists in Pursuit of an International Language; The Dematerialised Object; New Diasporic Voices, and The Moving Image.
Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2012
Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 2004