Jeremy Deller hosts magical fundraising event for the Contemporary Art Society raising £90,000 at Hoxton Hall

Turner Prize winning artist, Jeremy Deller hosted a rhythmic and celebratory fundraising event in East End’s Hoxton Hall, with a stellar committee and guest list including:

Jo Baldwin, Sophie Crichton-Stuart, Emma Goltz, Soo Hitchin, Harinder Hundle, Camilla Johnson-Hill, Sara Lord, Suling Mead, Adam Prideaux, Eva Rothschild, Ralph Rugoff, Sarah Staton, and Gala Wright.

Available for sale on the night were unique Neon Henge, measuring 290mm x 190 mm x 80mm in various colours, a special opportunity given the rareity of acquiring work by the artist. The sales of which brought the total raised for the evening to £90,000.

Guests were welcomed with Oaked Gin served by the Isle of Bute Distillery, with the menu for the evening being created by up-and-coming chef Blo Deady. Entertainment involved a Pop Quiz led by quizmaster Jeremy Deller inspired by his winning run as part of the Courtauld Team on University Challenge in December 2021, with musical interludes including recognising covers played by Steel Melodians from Ghost Town by the Specials to No Time to Die by Billie Eilish.

Previous Artist’s Tables have been hosted by artists including Edmund de Waal, Antony Gormley, Isaac Julian, Michael Landy & Gillian Wearing, Haroon Mirza, Grayson Perry, Tai Shani, Conrad Shawcross, Do Ho Suh and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The Contemporary Art Society has acquired his work for numerous galleries, such as I Love Melancholy (2000) for Southampton City Art Gallery (2000); This Is Us (2003) for MIMA (2004); William Elliot Whitmore, Live at Melancholy Ranch (2004) for Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2005); and Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain, 1984-1992 (2018) for Manchester Art Gallery (2020).

Jeremy Deller (b.1966, London) is a English conceptual artist. His eclectic work engages on a broad level with popular and traditional culture; his forays into folk art are deliberately low-brow, anti-urban and characterised by an entertaining lightness of touch. He often works collaboratively; for the 1996 work Acid Brass, presented live and on CD, he instigated the incongruous transcription of a number of acid house anthems for a traditional brass band. The strange juxtaposition of traditional brass band and contemporary dance music forced a revealing relationship between the old and the new and suggested the possibility not just of a collision but of an interaction between the cultures represented by these distinct musical forms. This approach was continued in the exhibition The Uses of Literacy (Norwich, Gal., 1997) for which Deller solicited and displayed material from fans of the rock group Manic Street Preachers; this was later published in book form again using a title borrowed from a classic analysis of popular culture by Richard Hoggart (London, 1957). Deller continued this accumulative, laissez-faire strategy in the Folk Archive project, begun in 1999 with Alan Kane (b. 1961). The artists described this work as a ‘celebration of subjectivity', and underlined the authenticity of the archived objects and documents. An Introduction to the Folk Archive (2000), a selective display of their findings from diverse sources such as morris dancing, gurning competitions and political demonstrations, was included at the exhibition Intelligence: New British Art (London, Tate, 2000).