The palm truth about British culture

Around the turn of the millennium British artists Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane decided to create a visual account of popular British culture Seeking to celebrate British activities past times and pursuits the duo incorporated paintings films performances costumes objects of protest and handcrafted works made by a cross section of people from prisoners and protestors to carnival troupes community groups and the homeless to highlight how creativity is a part of daytoday lifeOver six years they collected 280 elements that overcame the barriers of categorisation folk art fine art craft etc capturing the times and showing that art can be made by artists as well as nonartistsClairvoyents Hand Sign Blackpool 2004The Folk Archive was acquired by the British Council Collection in 2007 and has been exhibited in Belgrade Paris Milan and Shanghai Post the exhibition in Mumbai it will head to Kolkata and Delhi Excerpts from an interview with Deller and KaneQ How did the Folk Archive take shapeA Jeremy Deller JD Folk Archive is a collection of current and future UK Folk art The project took shape through a shared interest and the idea started from a pub conversationAlan Kane AK It was the end of the last century and we were thinking of how the nation was going to be represented by the authorities in The Millennium Dome exhibition We suspected the display would be slick and felt that material from an individual human scale would not feature much In a way this show was our response to this expectation our millennium Britain surveyVegetable Animal by GH Ghent Lambeth Country Fair LondonQ What are the varied elements that feature in the Folk ArchiveA AK We talked about updating the notion of what is considered Folk art in Britain Art made by working people was thought to have disappeared in the UK around the turn of the 20th century and we suspected it had probably just mutated evolved and became ignored We set ourselves the task of seeking it out and promoting it The exhibition shows examples of visual creativity from as many areas as we could conceive of signs graffiti performances jokes publications models tributes decorations cakes and even some paintings and sculptures The only thing which ties them together is that they were made to be seen but made by people who would not call themselves artists primarilyFolk Archive bannerQ Will the exhibits feature in entirety in the exhibitionA AK When we first made the exhibition many of the original objects were borrowed Most of these were returned to their owners apart from a few key things the British Council negotiated the purchase of However a substantial part of the exhibition included documentary photographs and videos which we collected of things in their location This was what we were left with after the original tour and this forms the bulk of the exhibition as it isJD We hope mostly everything is includedMy Pony Woody cakeQ How many years do the exhibits span over how long were they collectedA JD We spent five years taking pictures and picking things up Some exhibits in the show were new at the time we showed them first ie websites and things made on the day we saw them Other things some of the performative material for instance are part of long traditions that have been going on for hundreds of years Folk Archive was initially completed in 2005Snowdrop the Mechanical Elephant The Clare Family Egremont CumbriQ What were the challenges of gathering this range of collectiblesA JD None really apart from the sheer amount of things we could have included and our lack of time and money It is an infinite show potentiallyAK We knew we would not lsquodefinersquo our subject We were simply attempting to suggest the huge range and depth of creativity out there when you start to look When we started we werenrsquot sure of how people would feel about us paying a strange type of attention to their work but almost without exception people understood quickly what we were trying to do and contributed eagerlyFrom left to right Jeremy Deller and Alan KaneAs Jeremy says this was a pretty ambitious project undertaken on an extremely tight budget But right from the start it was important to us that we treat this material with the same care and respect that other art is given The major challenge was to try and make an expensivelooking show on a shoestring budget