Jeremy Deller Presents: Message To Love + Q&A

Bertha DocHouse is delighted to announce British artist Jeremy Deller as the curator of our inaugural DocHost event. For this brand new strand we invite a guest to choose a favourite documentary of their choice and discuss afterwards how they arrived at their selection.

Jeremy Deller has chosen Murray Lerner’s extraordinary snapshot of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, Message To Love. The film perfectly captures the highs and many lows of the UK spiritual gathering which had hoped to build on the success of Woodstock the previous year. However, against a backdrop of seminal live performances from Jimi Hendrix to The Doors and Leonard Cohen to Joni Mitchell, the ensuing chaos makes for compulsive viewing as Lerner guides us through the commercial and creative mishaps that ensured the event did not reoccur on the island for another thirty-two years.

The work of Jeremy Deller deftly captures and comments on the political and cultural landscape at home and abroad. Winner of the Turner Prize in 2004, Deller employs an innovative range of techniques – installation, performance, music and folk-art as well as documentary film – to communicate the diversity of his ideas.

Alexis Petridis, the Guardian’s head rock and pop critic, will host a Q&A afterwards with Jeremy Deller and Murray Lerner (via Skype).