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Perhaps his most beloved works, especially from ayouth perspective, are his explorations in dance music. Everybody In The Place – An Incomplete History of Britain 1984 – 1992, abrilliant documentary which aired on BBC2in 2019, was the artist’s examination of the significance of acid house and how it wasn’t all about drugs. It was about community, acollective spirit, rebelling against economic decline, class wars and over 10years of Tory misrule (sound familiar?). He filmed astaged lecture to aclassroom of diverse teenagers, as anew school of thought, and showed them period footage of ravers. Curators: Étienne Bernard Director of Frac Bretagne, Jean-Roch Bouiller Director of Rennes Museum of Art, Sophie Kaplan Director of La Criée Centre of Contemporary Art, Claire Lignereux Head of modern and contemporary art at Rennes Museum of Art and Exporama coordinator. Which historical era should people pay more attention to? The one that’s just passed; the previous five years.To reach this entrance, enter the Royal Festival Hall via the Southbank Centre Square Doors. Take the JCB Glass Lift to Level 2 and exit to the Riverside Terrace. Turn right to find the Queen Elizabeth Hall main entrance.

Does he worry about the current state of the world, the rising populism, the media propaganda, the acute sense of imperilled democracy? “Yeah, the world worries me constantly, but, for an artist, that is almost a good thing. It gives you something to constantly push against. If the world was perfect, what would I be doing – just making nice paintings all the time?” The venue for the event was a deconsecrated church with very understanding hosts. The Murdochs burned for 12 hours. By the end, Lachlan’s face had fallen off. Rupert’s stayed on, but now bowed slightly. Art is Magic is the first French retrospective of the celebrated English artist Jeremy Deller (1966, London), winner of the prestigious 2004 Turner Prize and Britain’s representative at the Venice Biennale in 2013.

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The candles were made in Australia from moulds, and great care was taken not just with their likenesses but also with details such as their shoes and their gait. Cumulatively, I hoped these almost-imperceptible details would add up to something convincing, uncanny even. With so many works to consider, there’s one piece that Deller is particularly proud of. Baghdad centred on acar damaged by the Al-Mutanabbi Street bombing in 2007, looking more like alarge scrap piece of metal than afour-wheeler. Asobering reminder of the 26 people who were killed by the bomb, Deller took the car on a2009 nationwide tour of America, before bringing it to the UK, where it currently sits at the Imperial War Museum.

Throughout 2019 and 2020, large parts of Australia were destroyed by a number of bushfires: Forty-six million acres of land were burned and it is estimated that up to 3 billion animals were displaced or killed. The Murdoch media in the country had initially attempted to ignore the story. When it became clear that they couldn’t, they were happy to repeat accusations that environmentalists had started the fires.Along with a bunch of other artists, I was invited in 2019 to make a limited-edition print to be sold to raise funds for a charity to help the human and non-human victims of the fires. I made an image of Lachlan Murdoch’s villa in Sydney being consumed by a bushfire. Hardly subtle, but to the point. It was printed on a textured grey metallic paper to give it a painterly feel. It was from these thoughts that Sacrilege, a life-sized inflatable model of Stonehenge, was created. I was trying to think what the stupidest idea that was possible to make would be, the sort of thing you might see on The Simpsons. It was made more or less by hand in Grantham by a company called Inflatable World Leisure. The inflatable stones were all individually painted. You can also use the external lift near the Artists' Entrance on Southbank Centre Square to reach Mandela Walk, Level 2.

While most conceptual artists probably accept that a certain degree of public bemusement comes with the turf, Deller is that rare thing: a conceptualist who feels the need to explain his art. “I do, yes,” he says, nodding, when we sit down to chat amid the organised clutter of the office of his flat overlooking north London’s Holloway Road, where he does most of his thinking and planning. “I’m aware that a lot of artists don’t, but I come from the approachable, rather than the obscure, school. To me, my work is quite obvious in a way, more obvious than a lot of contemporary art, but it is definitely conceptual insofar as I start with an idea and see what happens. That still unsettles people who expect art to be on gallery walls.” You could be talking to awoman whose son was killed the previous month,” he continues of his research process, ​ “and you wouldn’t know that until they told you. But it was an amazing achievement for me personally. Sometimes you have to take the risk.”

When he talks about his work, Deller often draws parallels between recent events and moments from history or mythology. He describes the rural acid-house raves of the late 80s, which he explored in his film Everybody in the Place, as “Dionysian and Bacchic”. When I ask him to elaborate, he says: “Though no one was thinking of it in these terms at the time, there was definitely a mythical, epic quality to the rave scene: the quest to find the rave, to move towards the light in the countryside, and to find a transcendent release through the experience. There was a folk element, too, insofar as raves were communal, grassroots events that involved rituals and strange modes of dress.” I turned off online comments as they seemed to be getting out of hand, though I wish I had taken screenshots of this billionaire pile-on. I actually felt a bit sorry for them, trying to gain some sympathy for themselves from the situation. Little did the Murdochs know that, later that year, I had a work in the pipes where a likeness of Bad Grandpa and Uncle Lachlan would literally be burned. The whole process was kept a secret because of the reach of the Murdoch press in Australia The Art is Magic exhibition provides a broad overview of Deller’s work from the 1990s to the present day, focusing on 15 major projects and key works that have marked his career. In addition, the event marks the publication of the first retrospective of the artist’s work in French. One retrospective, three worlds What are you currently working on? Well, apart from this book and all the promotion, something at the National Gallery. Much has been written about Deller over the decades but this, ‘the best book by Jeremy Deller’, is the first time he has pulled together all of his cultural touchstones.