As his most ambitious project comes together, the artist plans to unleash a bacchanalian festival that will be his most daring public artwork yet
On a frosty bright-blue day in February 2024, Jeremy Deller was in Dundee, examining severed heads. “How can anyone not be fascinated by a head?” he said. Deller is an elfin figure, 5ft 5 on a good day, a low-key, unintimidating presence. The only giveaway to his identity as an artist was his slightly dandyish clothing: a KLF T-shirt, a checked neckerchief, lemon-yellow socks and a purple Missoni sweater, which he hurriedly explained, lest he come across as too fancy, he had bought on sale. When he won the Turner prize in 2004 he looked like a dapper schoolboy. Twenty years on, the only indication he was nearing 60 was the way he kept alternating a pair of reading glasses with his sunglasses, toggling them between nose and forehead.
Deller, carrying himself more like a journalist than most people’s idea of an artist, was questioning Dr Tobias Houlton, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Dundee, about the art and science of building 3D or digital impressions of a face from skeletal remains. On a trip to the university the previous summer, Deller had been fascinated by a re-creation of the head of Charles Edward Stuart, the “Young Pretender” who claimed the British throne in 1745.
