MARK LECKEY.

Mark Leckey, who likes the idea of letting “culture use you as an instrument”, took the 2008 Turner Prize for his video Industrial Light and Magic. There was a feeling that the work was hard to get, something Leckey contested. “Who can’t understand it? I don’t understand who can’t understand it. Critics are middle brow and they want stuff that looks like art and maybe my stuff doesn’t look like art”, he said.
 
Leckey is best known for his film work, drawing inspiration from popular sources like the sci-fi movie Blade Runner and the cartoon character Felix the Cat. He explores contemporary visual culture with a film of Jeff Koons’ polished steel Rabbit, and his art lecture Cinema-in-the-Round is screened in a reconstructed movie theatre at London’s Tate Britain museum.
 
Fascinated by how the images on the screen seem to come to life, the artist talks about the transitions between two- and three-dimensionality and the relationship between object and image.
 
The sculptural quality of the films comes to the fore in Cinema-in-the-Round, in the 16mm film Made in ’Eaven and the videos Felix gets Broadcasted and The Thing in Regent’s Park. In the latter, we see a curious animated sculpture (by J.D. Williams) walking through Regent’s Park in London, taking the same route that the artist uses to go to his studio every day.
 
Mark Leckey’s eclectic assemblages of popular culture are captivating, mysterious and provocative, he haunts the secret parts of modern culture! He has confessed to having a “slight obsession” with Felix the Cat. Critics have panned the 2008 Turner Prize as “the worst on record”.