The immediate impression you get when viewing Jeremy Deller's English Magic is that it couldn't get any more British. The 14-minute film, made as a central part of Deller's solo exhibition in the British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, is populated with birds of prey native to the United Kingdom, tax protests, London buses and even a giant inflatable Sunday-roast dinner and Stonehenge.
It was playing in the Pavilion to the sounds of a steel band recorded at Abbey Road (the studio made famous by The Beatles) and adjacent to a dedicated tea room, where visitors could sit down and enjoy a cuppa.
And yet, speaking about the full exhibition, the Turner Prize-winning artist – he won in 1994 for a video study of the state of Texas – insists that he was “not consciously thinking of Britain” when he made the show.
In that respect, then, it is important to see the film not as a direct commentary on the British social system but as a series of symbols that underpin national identity.
This, says Simon Coates, the manager of Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre (Ductac), is why it is really relevant to audiences in the UAE and why he is so excited to be showing it in Ductac’s Gallery of Light beginning on Wednesday.
“On the surface, it is about being English, but it is actually not about that, it is about how you relate to your environment,” he says. “If you look at it in terms of Dubai, this becomes important. One of the things we want to do with this exhibition is start to make people think about the things that make them Emirati or Syrian or Iranian or any other nationality and how they identify with situations and objects.”
English Magic, Deller's original film, will be playing in the Gallery of Light alongside two short documentaries. The first, commissioned by the British Council, shows the artist being interviewed about the Venice Biennale exhibition and the second, a film produced by The Vinyl Factory, shows the story of the making of the soundtrack for the artwork. It follows The Melodians, a South London-based steel band who, for Deller's film, recorded cover versions of three tracks – The Man Who Sold the World by David Bowie, Voodoo Ray by A Guy Called Gerald and Symphony No 5 in D major by Vaughan Williams.
But again, even though these tracks are, in their own distinct ways, quintessentially English, we have to remember not to put too much emphasis on it. Instead, we must assume more significance on the second word of the title – magic.
“Jeremy Deller has chosen the word magic carefully,” explains Coates. “It is not Disney magic, nor is it black magic or voodoo, it is transformative. It is the fact that things can transform in a good way and a bad way.”
Deller himself expands on this during an interview with Hal Foster, who wrote the opening essay for the exhibition catalogue, in which he describes English Magic as expounding "the mythical qualities of popular culture and its abilities to weave spells, especially in music".
The video is Deller’s own contribution to pop culture, intended to be seen on one level as a music video to accompany the steel band’s cover tracks and on another as a deeply philosophical combination of sounds and images.
“[It is] the magic of deception and the magic of wonder,” Deller says in the documentary, describing how popular culture is embedded with concealment, saying that “things can appear and disappear and be tricky” but that “the good magic” is the music and the film and how they unite people. So he sets the scene for the jovial tones of the steel band that take us through the uplifting images of children bouncing on the inflatable Stonehenge, which Deller took on a tour of the UK. Yet even this was a carefully considered stage and intentionally strikes at the irony that the inflatable version is more accessible than the real landmark, which is now protected, with access restricted.
Those same sounds also mysteriously and directly correlate the talons of magnificent birds of prey with the mechanical claw of a car crusher.
The video’s opening scenes show birds of prey flying in slow motion and then the scene shifts to a scrapyard where two Range Rovers are being crushed.
In Venice, the combination of these images was shown in a giant mural painted on the wall of the pavilion depicting a hen harrier, one of the rarest birds of prey in Britain, taking a Range Rover in its talons and crushing it.
Its explanation is found in the catalogue, with the recantation of an incident that happened in 2007 at Sandringham Estate where Prince Harry was staying. A pair of hen harriers were shot out of the sky in October that year, an act that is punishable by six months in jail, although in this instance no one was ever caught.
Here, Deller’s victorious bird becomes a strong statement, as nature takes its revenge on the Range Rover, the vehicle of choice of the upper classes.
These socialist messages conjure up an interesting analogy for Coates.
“[Deller] reminds me of Robin Hood,” he says. “He has the quality about him where he sees social injustice and he has to comment on it. There is a strong community edge to his work that is really inclusive.”
This, Coates says, is probably the reason that Deller agreed to have his work shown in Ductac. It is a non-profit community centre and there is no financial gain for him to show there.
“It is a huge thing for Ductac to have such a world-class artist exhibiting here,” says Coates. “I wasn’t expecting him to reply to my email in the first instance. It is not part of his agenda to show in this part of the world and he didn’t have to do it at all. That’s why I hope that people come to see the work and take the time to dig deep within themselves to find out what it is all about.”
• English Magic by Jeremy Deller runs from Wednesday until September 21 at Ductac. For more details, call 04 341 4777
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