Press release
Deities in Dundee: major new Jeremy Deller commission for National Gallery bicentenary
A major new UK wide project by Jeremy Deller to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery will have its Scottish chapter in Dundee this month.
Published on 12 May 2025
Jeremy Deller's work has already appeared across Dundee in recent months.
The event is made in collaboration with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) and University of Dundee and will take place in Dundee City Square and Marryat hall on Saturday 24 May.
The Dundee project - Meet the Gods - offers a chance to collectively revel with the Roman deity, Bacchus (the patron of the arts and protector of the theater) and his mythical friends. Art students will demonstrate the power of the Art School to produce collective joy with a showcase taking place in Dundee City Square and Maryatt Hall. Both locations are renowned historical landmarks and cultural cornerstones of Dundee, known for their connections to celebration, demonstration and celebration, the perfect location for artistic revelry.
This event will include a performance by ‘weirdo-punk performance band’, Fallope and the Tubes and there will also be an opportunity to leave with your own DIY merch via the creative steer of collaborative artists Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps (KennardPhillipps) - a concept that was recently trialled at a Massive Attack gig in the summer of 2024.
The event has also been supported by a series of facilitated and collaborative workshops with Dundee Community Gardens and Jeremy Deller developed the project onsite with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design students in late April.
“To have someone of Jeremy’s standing, a Turner Prize winner, working with our students has been incredible," said Anita Taylor, Dean of DJCAD.
"He has really tapped into their enthusiasm and the process has been truly collaborative. To have been selected by the National Gallery as the Scottish partner for Triumph of Art has been a real honour and reinforces both the University and city’s standing as a beacon in UK Culture. Over the months we have slowly seen Meet the Gods come together. While I cannot give too much away about the final event, I can promise that it will excite everyone - whether they believe they are interested in art or not. It will be unlike anything the city has ever seen before.”
This event is part of The Triumph of Art, a nation-wide project by artist Jeremy Deller. It was commissioned by the National Gallery, London, as part of NG200, its Bicentenary celebrations. The Triumph of Art is being developed in partnership with Mostyn in Llandudno, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, The Box in Plymouth and The Playhouse in Derry-Londonderry.
Each partner will host an event before a celebration in Trafalgar Square in July. To round off the Gallery’s bicentenary and look ahead to the next 100 years, there will be a family friendly event in Trafalgar Square with contributions from all four nations, and the work and creations Jeremy has developed with them. There will be live music, performances, practical workshops, opportunities to meet familiar faces from the Collection and a big birthday tea party. The Triumph of Art will be a celebration of art and its place in society.
Assistant Curators have been working at each four areas, in a working pattern entirely new to the National Gallery, and made possible by the support of Art Fund. These organisations themselves also mark a significant expansion in the National Gallery’s partnership strategy, including for the first time a performing arts venue in The Playhouse, and the first formal partnership with an art school (or college) in Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, part of the University of Dundee.
The Triumph of Art, including its constituent research and public programme, will be developed with close links to the communities and geography of all partners. Each will research, develop and stage a local element, before the collaborative projects will join together.
Deller has been researching and cataloguing events on the Square as a history of celebration, commemoration and demonstration, collecting countless instances of joy and art in activism. The Triumph of Art will culminate in a major event on Trafalgar Square in July 2025, drawing to a close the NG200 year-long festival of art and looking to the start of the Gallery’s next century.
Jeremy Deller said, "It's going to be fine I am sure - we will be in the lap of the gods!"
Laura McSorley, Art Fund Assistant Curator: Jeremy Deller Commission, said, "It's been an absolute joy to deliver The Triumph of Art in Dundee and connect with partner organisations across the four nations - What a privilege it has been to work closely with DJCAD students to harness the collective energy of the Art School to bring Jeremy's vision to life and celebrate creativity in all of its forms!"
Emily Stone, Project Curator at the National Gallery, added, "The Triumph of Art by Jeremy Deller is an artwork that centres on bringing people together in a celebration of creativity and civic pride across the UK. We are delighted to be working with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design students on creating Meet the Gods and bringing some of the strange, joyful and raucous mythological stories from the Gallery to life in Dundee. There will be nods to ancient Scottish traditions along with Classical rituals with contemporary twists, dancing, music, and importantly a lot of fun!"
About Jeremy Deller
Jeremy Deller (b. 1966, London) studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute and at Sussex University. He began making artworks in the early 1990s, often showing them outside conventional galleries. In 1993, while his parents were on holiday, he secretly used the family home for an exhibition titled Open Bedroom. Four years later he produced the musical performance Acid Brass with the Williams-Fairey Band and began making art in collaboration with other people. In 2000, with fellow artist Alan Kane, Deller began a collection of items that illustrate the passions and pastimes of people from across Britain and the social
classes. Treading a fine line between art and anthropology, Folk Archive is a collection of objects which touch on diverse subjects such as Morris Dancing, gurning competitions, and political demonstrations. The Folk Archive became part of the British Council Collection in 2007 and has since toured to Shanghai, Paris and Milan.
In 2001 Deller staged The Battle of Orgreave, commissioned by Artangel and Channel 4, directed by Mike Figgis. The work involved a re-enactment which brought together around 1,000 veteran miners and members of historical societies to restage the 1984 clash between miners and police in Orgreave, Yorkshire. In 2004, Deller won the Turner Prize for Memory Bucket (2003), a documentary about Texas. He has since made several documentaries on subjects ranging from the exotic wrestler Adrian Street to the die-hard international fan base of the band Depeche Mode.
In 2009 Deller undertook a road trip across the US, from New York to Los Angeles, towing a car destroyed in a bomb attack in Baghdad and accompanied by an Iraqi citizen and a US war veteran. The project, It Is What It Is, was presented at Creative Time and the New Museum, New York and the car is now part of the Imperial War Museum’s collection. In the same year he staged Procession, in Manchester, involving participants, commissioned floats, choreographed music and performances creating an odd and celebratory spectacle. During the summer of 2012 Sacrilege, Deller’s life-size inflatable version of Stonehenge – a co-commission between Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and the Mayor of London – toured around the UK to great public acclaim.
In 2013 Deller represented Britain at the Venice Biennale with a multi-faceted exhibition titled, English Magic. Encompassing notions of good and bad magic, socialism, war, popular culture, archaeology and tea, the exhibition gave a view of the UK that was both combative and affectionate. His First World War memorial work - We’re Here Because We’re Here (2016) and the documentary Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984–1992 (2019), have influenced the conventional map of contemporary art. Most recently Deller has published Art is Magic, a book that documents key works in his career alongside the art, pop music, film, politics and history that have inspired him.
About the National Gallery
The National Gallery is one of the greatest art galleries in the world. Founded by Parliament in 1824, the Gallery houses the nation’s collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the late 13th to the early 20th century. The collection includes works by Bellini, Cézanne, Degas, Leonardo, Monet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Renoir, Rubens, Titian, Turner, Van Dyck, Van Gogh and Velázquez. The Gallery’s key objectives are to enhance the collection, care for the collection and provide the best possible access to visitors. Admission free. More at www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD)
Dating back to 1888, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) is the creative heart of the University of Dundee. World-renowned for its high-quality teaching and research in art and design and the application of our creative expertise in interdisciplinary contexts, DJCAD has helped to launch the careers of artists, designers, and architects across the globe.
More information
book tickets for events at nationalgallery.org.uk
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