Dream English Kid, 1964 – 1999 AD (2015)

Mark Leckey makes work that is both wideranging and multidisciplinary. His practice incorporates sculpture, performance, sound and film, predominantly featuring reconfigured archival video footage. The subject of the work is often concerned with under-represented or overlooked aspects of British culture, exploring ideas about both collective and personal history, desire and transformation.

For Dream English Kid 1964-1999 AD (2015), Leckey reconfigured archival footage from the UK in the 1960s to the 1990s and then combined this with new material including CGI animations. By collaging footage from the Internet, music, films and advertisements, he reconstructs a history of ‘found memories’, focusing on key episodes in his own life from 1964-1999. Fragments include global events such as nuclear bomb tests and news coverage of Korean Airlines Flight 007 shot down by the USSR, as well as events closer to home, notably the footage of gangs of youths in the Toxteth Riots of 1981. A chance discovery on YouTube of a bootleg recording of a 1979 Joy Division concert in a club in Liverpool, which he in fact attended as a teenager, inspired Leckey to make the work. While the film can be seen as an autobiography of sorts, it also explores ideas around identity, the individual and collective memory.

The artist’s interest in the power of images and objects is reflected in recurring motifs such as a pylon, which represents his interest in animism and the peculiar qualities of everyday objects. References to the moon and lunar eclipses indicate a fascination with the celestial and the ways in which we connect to the universe.

The acquisition of Dream English Kid 1964-1999 AD significantly strengthens the representation of Leckey’s work within Tate’s collection. It provides Tate with the opportunity to show the work in a wide variety of contexts, namely film, video and photography, works concerned with individual or collective memory, and works that use found footage or deal with digital/post-Internet issues.

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