In the wake of Cool Britannia and the reshaping of the economy around the arts by Tony Blair’s Labour government in the late 1990s, Akeroyd suddenly found himself in competition with other collectors. ‘Everyone was running about trying to buy the next crazy, fantastic painting,’ he recalls.
It was around this time that he bought Adam Chodzko’s poetic intervention, Flasher (1996). The artist rented videos from Blockbuster, added 60 seconds of footage of red marine distress signal flares to the end of the films, and returned them to the shop. ‘I thought it was a wonderful piece of disruption,’ says Akeroyd. Other moving-image work followed, including an animation by Angus Fairhurst and Mark Leckey’s DVD Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore — the artist’s soul-inspired romp through northern working-class subcultures.
In discussions with Derek Jarman’s early collaborator James Mackay, together with Amanda Wilkinson, who represents Jarman’s estate, he began looking at Jarman’s moving-image work, including Electric Fairy — Jarman’s first film. At one time it was thought to have been lost, and Akeroyd realised how important it was to keep the film in the public realm.
‘Derek Jarman is one of the greatest British artists ever,’ he says, ‘but at the time there were great works that few had thought to buy or exhibit. Thankfully through the work of LUMA Foundation, which bought and restored Jarman’s Super 8s, he is now getting the recognition he deserves.’
