Mike Kelley

On 25 September 2010, Kelley’s Mobile Homestead – a facsimile of his childhood home constructed on the back of a trailer – made its maiden voyage from the grounds of The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit to the ‘mother ship’, his original home in the suburbs of the city.

Two of these films chart the homestead’s journey along one particular street, Michigan Avenue, reversing the historic ‘white flight’ movement of people that occurred in the mid-1960s in Detroit as the decline of the automobile industry and increasing racial tensions caused an exodus of middle-class white communities from the city centre. The footage of this extraordinary road trip is interspersed with interviews that chronicle the varied lives of those who had come to populate the area, at a moment when the city was questioning its post-industrial prospects and future development.  The third film work in the trilogy beautifully documents the ‘christening’ and launch of the work as a permanent fixture back at the museum in Detroit, where it still stands today.

We were thrilled to be presenting this work at DCA in partnership with Artangel and the Mike Kelley Foundation, at a time when we as citizens of Dundee are looking to the future of our own city and the promise it holds.

Mike Kelley (b. 1954, Detroit, d. 2012, Los Angeles) is widely considered one of the most influential artists of our time. Irreverent but deeply informed, topical yet visionary, Kelley worked in a startling array of genres and styles, including performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, photography, sound, text, and sculpture. He also worked on curatorial projects; collaborated with many other artists and musicians; and left a formidable body of critical and creative writing.

Throughout his career Kelley sought to understand the cultures around him from the bottom up; he mined popular culture and both modernist and alternative traditions, which he set in relation to relentless self and social examinations.

He received his BA in 1976 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his MFA. in 1978 from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. Major exhibitions include Categorical Imperative and Morgue, Van Abbemuseum, Stedelijk, The Netherlands (2000); Sod and Sodie Sock (with Paul McCarthy), Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon, Institut d’art contemporain, France (2003); Mike Kelley–The Uncanny, Tate Liverpool, England (2004, travelled to MUMOK, Museum of Modern Art, Vienna); Profounders vertes Musée du Louvre, Paris (2006); Day is Done Judson Church Dance, Judson Memorial Church, New York (2009); Themes and Variations from 35 Years, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2012); Mobile Homestead, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Michigan (2013); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); An Homage to Mike Kelley, MoMA PS1, New York (2013); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2014).