jeremy deller, welcome to this cultural life. thank you. you were brought up in dulwich in south london. what are your earliest cultural memories of home? home. well, church, actually. there s culture in church. yeah. there s a human culture, there s people, and then there s music and there s visuals and smells and so on. so, the church, maybe early on as a child, is something i remember. i remember seeing help, the beatles film, very early on. i remember telling my mother i d just discovered these four men who live in the same house as each other, which was very much like the house we lived in. and i was amazed. then she told me, oh, actually, i know those people. that s the beatles and they re not around any more. that was your introduction to the beatles? yeah, and i was very sad. i remember being very sad about it, thinking that they didn t live together properly and it was actually. they weren t around. so help was a big influence on me, and television in general, i t
or often you feel, like, misunderstood, and you want to get into the dark side of life, not that you know anything about it particularly. and so bacon, for me, wasjust, he kind of spoke to me. ijust thought, this is just amazing that someone does this. and also, he was very articulate. when did you first see his paintings? i can t remember. i must have been about 13, 14. i can t remember the first time. and then you read what he s written about himself and the interviews, and you see him in interviews. he s incredibly charismatic. you didn t go to art school, did you? no, thank god. i would have been taught all those techniques that| i don t want to know. i mean, i want to find my own technique, because if you re l trying to do something, if you re trying to do - something that s rather - different and new, you can t use the old techniquesl which, arm, which have already been used. you make your own technique. and he talks in a very interesting way about art, i felt. so i was absolut