Mike Kelley (1954 - 2012)

Tribute and Screening: Double Feature 5:10pm and 7:15pm

Called one of the most significant artists of his generation, Stamps graduate Mike Kelley was an iconoclast who introduced a distinctive Detroit sensibility to the international art world with his references to everything from Soupy Sales to the Vernor’s gnome. He was a founding member of Destroy All Monsters, a collective formed in Ann Arbor in 1974 with artists Jim Shaw, Niagara and Cary Loren. A major retrospective of his work opened at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2012, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris in 2013 and will travel to MOMA PS1, NY in October 2013 and MOCA Los Angeles in 2014. Before his death in 2012, Kelley had begun work based on a life-sized replica of his childhood suburban Detroit home. The new ​‘homestead’ has been relocated to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).

Cary Loren, founding member of Destroy All Monsters, and Mary Clare Stevens, the Executive Director of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and longtime Kelley friend and studio manager will speak. Their presentations will be followed by the screening of two videos documenting the homestead’s journey from downtown Detroit to Kelley’s former home in Westland, and back again.

• Video 1: Going West on Michigan Avenue from Downtown Detroit to Westland, Mike Kelley, USA, 2010-11, 76 min
• Video 2: Going East on Michigan Avenue from Westland to Downtown Detroit, Mike Kelley, USA, 2010-11, 76 min 

NOTE: Video 2 will be screened at 7:15pm with introductory remarks by Mary Clare Stephens.

Supported by MOCAD, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, History of Art and the Mike Kelley Foundation.