Mike Kelley – Day is Done

Day is Done is Kelley’s latest project, which consists of reconstructions of photographs of extracurricular activities found in highschool yearbooks. Over the years Kelley has collected hundreds of such ritualistic images and arranged them into rough categories, such as: religious performances, thugs, hicks, satanic imagery, and equestrian events. The double CD Day is Done is presented as the “original motion picture soundtrack” of the project.

Departing from the yearbook photographs Kelley plays off themes, lyrics, and musical styles against each other in a deconstructionist and hallucinatory opera. The double CD was released on Kelley’s Compound Annex label and contains forty-nine tracks with titles as Horse Dance Of The False Virgin, Ol’ Filthy, and Empty Gym. Music and lyrics by Mike Kelley, arrangements and orchestration by Scott Benzel.

2 CDs in jewel box, with liner notes, color illus., as new, like a box of chocolates, wrapped in shrink.

Mike Kelley reveals how photographs from yearbooks and newspapers in Detroit served as the inspiration behind the performative project Day Is Done shown installed at Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2005.