More than Musicians: Destroy All Monsters In the Art and Film World

John Sinclair of the White Panther Party and other figures from the Detroit rock scene, as portrayed by the installation artist Mike Kelley of the Destroy All Monsters collective in “Amazing Freaks of the Motor City” (2001). Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
dam
dam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Sinclair of the White Panther Party and other figures from the Detroit rock scene, as portrayed by the installation artist Mike Kelley of the Destroy All Monsters collective in “Amazing Freaks of the Motor City” (2001). Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

 

1995: The artwork of the remaining members of DAM was exhibited at the Book Beat Gallery in Detroit.

1996: The Deep Gallery in Tokyo displayed DAM artwork as well.

2000: Strange Fruit: Rock Apochrypha is an exploration of Detroit culture. Created by Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, and Jim Shaw (also known as the Destroy All Monsters Collective), Strange Fruit consists of four mural-sized paintings and a video. The paintings, designed by Kelley and Shaw, focus on entertainment and subculture personalities of Detroit in the 1960s and early 1970s. The film, directed by Loren, is a mix of interviews of with rock promoter and Grande ballroom owner Russ Gibb, R&B musician Andrew Williams, underground radio disc jockeys, and Motor City Wresting promoter Ron Ruby, and John Sinclair's White Panther pronouncements at the Ann Arbor Hash Bash. The soundtrack, of course, is by Destroy all Monsters. The exhibition was finished and shown in 2000 at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, Washington. In 2001 it was exhibited once again at the Detroit Institute of Arts as DAM Collective: Artists Take on Detroit. In 2002, the work was included in the Whitney Biennial of Art in New York City. In 2006, DAM toured with Strange Fruit to the Magasin Center for Contemporary Art in Grenoble, France . For more information on this exhibit, and to see the paintings, click here

Current: From September 29, 2007 to January 6, 2008, a history of Destroy All Monsters will be exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibit, Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967. In the exhibit, the band is described as "noise rock innovators who immortalized Detroit's music legends through wall-sized paintings." Read the press release for this exhibit here

Destroy All Monsters

Meet the Band

Discography

Fan Feedback

DAM in the News

Time Line

DAM Art

DAM Photo Gallery

LISTEN TO DAM (under downloads on the left)

Bibliography

Back to Rob King

Back to King Family Home