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
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
noise rock innovators who immortalized
Detroit's music
legends through wall-sized paintings." Read the press release for this exhibit here