Jeremy Deller Reflects on Wrestler Adrian Street's Life as Performance Art

Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller recounts the life of wrestler Adrian Street, who died in 2023 at age 83. Street created his persona as an 'exotic' performer blending masculine and feminine traits with glittery makeup and spandex costumes. He left Britain for the United States in the 1980s as wrestling declined there, eventually settling in Pensacola, Florida. Street's self-created world included a home filled with his own furniture, artwork, and wrestling memorabilia. A 1973 photograph by Dennis Hutchinson showing Street with his coalminer father became an iconic image of postwar Britain. Street spent his teenage years in 1960s London, frequenting Soho clubs and encountering figures like writer Daniel Farson and artist Francis Bacon. His flamboyant act played with homophobia while he maintained a heterosexual marriage to fellow wrestler 'Miss' Linda for over thirty years. Street returned to his birthplace of Brynmawr, Wales five years before his death, having lived what Deller considers a form of performance art.