Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, the artist’s largest public artwork, has at long last arrived in Los Angeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary after its pilgrimage across the country. The piece, which is a replication of the facade of Kelley’s childhood home in Detroit, settles into its new digs at MOCA’s Mike Kelley retrospective in its first outing from its permanent home at MOCAD in Detroit.
Kelley’s Mobile Homestead made its Los Angeles debut last weekend at “Walk the Talk,” the biennial Skid Row parade organized by the community performing arts group, the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD). Over the next six weeks, the homestead will play host to a rotating series of exhibitions and community initiatives, the first of which is a powerful show on the history of Los Angeles’ Skid Row presented by LAPD.
At yesterday’s opening, MOCA curator Bennett Simpson spoke about the labor of love involved in trekking Kelley’s homestead across the country. In discussing the history of Mobile Homestead, Simpson noted that Kelley was known for his skepticism of public art. “He had a belief that often public art is foisted upon a public that doesn’t necessarily want it, that it is often fraught with pretensions about doing good and ameliorating public ills, or beautifying the community, and in fact, the opposite is often the case,” said Simpson. Kelley’s intent was to create an active, participatory space that would actually serve the needs of the communities who host it—both in Detroit, where a permanent structure will play counterpart to the mobile facade, and now in Los Angeles, where community groups including the LA Human Right to Housing Collective, the Local United Network in Combating Hunger (LUNCH), and the American Red Cross will all hold programs during the homestead’s stay.
Mary Clare Stevens, executive director of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, explained how Kelley initially envisioned Mobile Homestead as a private project, and how he pursued the current owner of his childhood home for years in hopes of purchasing it back for his own use. As she describes, Kelley imagined the home repurposed as his own gallery, with “tunnels underneath that might trail out into the neighborhood.” As his idea evolved into a public project, it grew both playful and subversive. Stevens mentioned Kelley’s vision of driving the “Mobile Homestead” to Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, an outdoor museum showcasing historic American homes and structures, to “park in the parking lot and hope we could stay there until we got kicked out by the police.” In that sense, the Mobile Homestead can also be seen as an interloper.
The final piece represents another embodiment of Kelley’s fraught relationship with his own home. In his statement to the opening’s attendees, Simpson offered his interpretation of Mobile Homestead within Kelley’s body of work. “Home was not an easy concept for Mike,” said Simpson. “Often, when home is present in his art, it is not a stable thing: it something that is mobile. It is something that is seen from a distance that is disorienting. It is something one is often separated from, isolated from.” As a work of public art,
Kelley’s Mobile Homestead made its Los Angeles debut last weekend at “Walk the Talk,” the biennial Skid Row parade organized by the community performing arts group, the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD). Over the next six weeks, the homestead will play host to a rotating series of exhibitions and community initiatives, the first of which is a powerful show on the history of Los Angeles’ Skid Row presented by LAPD.
At yesterday’s opening, MOCA curator Bennett Simpson spoke about the labor of love involved in trekking Kelley’s homestead across the country. In discussing the history of Mobile Homestead, Simpson noted that Kelley was known for his skepticism of public art. “He had a belief that often public art is foisted upon a public that doesn’t necessarily want it, that it is often fraught with pretensions about doing good and ameliorating public ills, or beautifying the community, and in fact, the opposite is often the case,” said Simpson. Kelley’s intent was to create an active, participatory space that would actually serve the needs of the communities who host it—both in Detroit, where a permanent structure will play counterpart to the mobile facade, and now in Los Angeles, where community groups including the LA Human Right to Housing Collective, the Local United Network in Combating Hunger (LUNCH), and the American Red Cross will all hold programs during the homestead’s stay.
Mary Clare Stevens, executive director of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, explained how Kelley initially envisioned Mobile Homestead as a private project, and how he pursued the current owner of his childhood home for years in hopes of purchasing it back for his own use. As she describes, Kelley imagined the home repurposed as his own gallery, with “tunnels underneath that might trail out into the neighborhood.” As his idea evolved into a public project, it grew both playful and subversive. Stevens mentioned Kelley’s vision of driving the “Mobile Homestead” to Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, an outdoor museum showcasing historic American homes and structures, to “park in the parking lot and hope we could stay there until we got kicked out by the police.” In that sense, the Mobile Homestead can also be seen as an interloper.
The final piece represents another embodiment of Kelley’s fraught relationship with his own home. In his statement to the opening’s attendees, Simpson offered his interpretation of Mobile Homestead within Kelley’s body of work. “Home was not an easy concept for Mike,” said Simpson. “Often, when home is present in his art, it is not a stable thing: it something that is mobile. It is something that is seen from a distance that is disorienting. It is something one is often separated from, isolated from.” As a work of public art,