Mike Kelley

About

Mobile Homestead was the final work made by the great American artist Mike Kelley before his untimely death in 2012. The project involved Kelley building an exact replica of his childhood home, a 1950s suburban house in the Detroit suburb of Westland, with a special detachable façade that could be mounted on a chassis and driven around like a conventional mobile home. This trilogy of remarkable documentary-style films charts the maiden voyage of the Mobile Homestead from downtown Detroit, along Michigan Avenue, to the ‘mothership' that is the original Kelley home, and back again. A third film documents the opening ‘launch' at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, where the completed Mobile Homestead stands today. Going West on Michigan Avenue from Downtown Detroit to Westland is the first part of Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead trilogy. The film documents, in ‘real-time', the journey of the replica to the original homestead, tracing en route the remarkable shift along Michigan Avenue from the urban to the suburban. In a sequence of interviews, Kelley brings us face to face with residents from the wealthy area of Dearborn, the impoverished black neighbourhoods of Inkster and the white, working-class outskirts of Wayne and Westland. Their personal stories and memories indicate the extraordinary diversity of a city with which the artist shares an ambivalent past. Mobile Homestead was commissioned by Artangel with support from the Luma Foundation and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. To book tickets please email cinema@whirledart.co.uk