Mark Leckey’s First and Last

Since the 1990s, Mark Leckey has been working across sculpture, installation, music, performance and video art to interrogate technology, pop culture, class, youth culture, memory and nostalgia, themes explored in our 2023 print issue dedicated to the artist. He broke ground with his 1999 video essay Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, a montage of found footage from the British rave scene of the early 90s, and in 2008, won the Turner Prize for his film Industrial Light and Magic.

Leckey’s latest project, ‘In The Offing’, is set in two destinations: Margate’s Dreamland amusement park and Turner Contemporary. For this group show (culminating in a 45-minute looped video), Leckey has taken on the roles of both artist and editor, commissioning work from artists that respond to the idea of a near future, and all the anticipation and foreboding that accompanies it.

First: Football hooligans, Tate Britain, November, 2019

It’s a photo from my 2019 show, ‘O’ Magic Power Of Bleakness’ at Tate Britain. While the show was on, I did some events and photoshoots with dancer Oona Doherty and we filmed dancing under the bridge [in the installation at Tate Britain]. And then [musician and rapper] Blackhaine turned up and they did separate dance routines. I had these young models that I wanted to dress like this forgotten subculture from the mid-70s, who were known as Boot Boys, because they wore big boots. They were basically football hooligans. Here, I copied [the style of] a Manchester United fan. They were known as the Red Army, and they were the biggest and most ferocious football hooligans. They would go on the rampage. In the ‘70s I was a young kid and these were all much bigger lads than me. I was half intimidated, and half wanted to be like them. It’s a look that’s been forgotten. So I had these three models dressed like that, running around under the bridge. We filmed and took photographs, but to be honest, it didn’t really work. I never used the images for anything, so all I’ve got left of that are those shots, where they’re in the dressing room.

The model featured, I tried to look up what his name is and all I could find was Gaz, so I can’t credit him, but he was quite good. The project mainly didn’t work because the models I had weren’t ugly enough; in the 70s, these lads would have no teeth and would look quite scary and menacing. The models looked sweet. I’m so obsessive about these things: it’s about the way they hold themselves, the way they stand, the look in their eyes, and all the rest of it, it was just wrong. I should have had some little scally kids instead. Their equivalents now I suppose would be roadmen. There’s that same sort of fear, the same sort of ‘folk devil’ aspects to the hooligans that you get now.

Last: Rainbow unicorn toy

This was taken last summer. It’s my favourite last picture. It’s my oldest daughter holding a toy that I used in my latest video, the one that’s in Margate, called DAZZLEDDARK. She’s holding a rainbow unicorn, which my youngest daughter now has. The toy is actually in front of me now, lying on the floor, unloved, rejected.

I’ve got two young daughters, so I’m surrounded by this kind of aesthetic, like what they watch on the TV: glitter, sparkles, unicorns, rainbows. I’m drawn to these things, it’s a very contemporary aesthetic, that cuteness. It’s like a weird optimism that often disguises some kind of anxiety, fear, dread. If you watch kids’ shows, even something like My Little Pony, there’s always something quite anxious they’re dealing with. It’s very appealing to me. It got me thinking about all these plush toys that you win at the fair or amusement parks. In the video, you see all the plush toys dangling in a giant bunch. I had this idea that their home is the amusement park and they get lost and end up in the kind of tidal flats [of Margate] and they’re trying to get back to the bright lights of the fair.