Artist’s confession: I burnt a Hockney
A TURNER PRIZE winning artist accidentally burnt a David Hockney while working as a gallery technician.
Jeremy Deller, who won the art prize in 2004 for a video, told Desert Island Discs he still has “nightmares” about what his future would have held if he had not become an artist.
He said: “I tried to work in a gallery once and it didn’t go well at all. I burnt a Hockney on the first morning of the first day that I was a technician.
“It had a sticker on the back and the chief technician said, ‘You’ve got to take this sticker off’.”
Deller said he used what he thought was a hairdryer but was in fact a wallpaper stripper.
He told the show, broadcast on Radio 4 today: “I turned the frame around [and] saw a big black mark on the print and condensation on the inside of the frame.
“I put it in the racks and didn’t tell anyone.”
It came as a BBC arts expert revealed his cat had wrecked a £5,000 work by 17th century portrait painter John Michael Wright.
Dr Bendor Grosvenor, who appeared in five seasons of BBC TV’s Fake Or Fortune? was restoring the work when his pet Padme raked its claws down the middle of the canvas, leaving a gaping hole.
Dr Grosvenor added Padme is “not a fan of John Michael Wright, and regrets nothing”.
Desert Island Discs, Radio 4, today, 11.15am.