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Mike Kelley was a hugely influential American artist working with performance, video and installation. He collaborated with many other artists including Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, and John Miller as well as musicians throughout his short life, alongside his art he left a formidable body of critical and creative writing.
Kelley’s interest in working-class culture, popular entertainments, subcultural traditions, and socially accepted practices of ‘deviance’, such as Halloween, led to his most ambitious project: the Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction series (2000–11). To create these works, Kelley restaged US high school yearbook photos depicting extracurricular activities into performances for camera. Some of the scenarios are playful, while others explore violence and childhood trauma. The videos were then presented as installations that featured the stage-set, costumes, and props and the reconstructed image shown alongside the original yearbook photo.
Text adapted from Tate Exhibition Guide, 2024/5
Image: Mike Kelley, Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction 13 (Jewess), 2004 - 2005
