The Uses of Literacy draws on the artwork of rock fans. Picture © Jeremy Deller
Exhibition: The Uses of Literacy, Bothy Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, until June 28 2009
If you're going to curate art from a group of fans smitten with a particular band, it may as well be Manic Street Preachers.
Twenty-three years after they formed, their acclaimed new album, Journal for Plague Lovers, is full of lyrics taken from poetry, collages and drawings by Richey Edwards, their guitarist and songwriter who disappeared in an apparent suicide after the release of groundbreaking album The Holy Bible in 1995.
From paintings to textiles and photographs, the impassioned Welsh trio's nine LPs have been as concerned and intertwined with artwork as they have with music, so it's not hard to imagine why former Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller chose their followers in a series of ads placed in a fanzine and Melody Maker in 1998.
The creativity of their fans matches the artistic inclinations of the band. Picture © Jeremy Deller
"It's more about people's relationship to music and about how creative it can be," he explained at the time, discussing rock as "a spiritual replacement" for the amateur artists he forged a close dialogue with.
Having initially formed an exhibition, the transcriptions and outpourings of devotion (including, apparently, a collage of frontman Nicky Wire morphing into Jesus) were published as a 48-page book by the same name, and now the Arts Council Collection has bought the "installation" version with the aid of a £20,000 Art Fund grant.
Caroline Douglas, Head of the ACC at the Hayward Gallery, said they had "seized a rare opportunity" to secure the "key early work" by Deller. Deller himself echoed the escalating success of the band by winning the Turner six years after the show.
"This artwork, by one of the UK's leading contemporary artists, offers an original take on popular culture and the music industry," added Andrew Macdonald, Director of The Art Fund. Like the Manics themselves, it should be emotional.
