In Conversation with Michael Landy: 26 July, 7-9pm at Gunnersbury Park

Join us for an evening with artist Michael Landy, CBE, RA, who will share a selection of previous works – including Breakdown (2001) an Artangel commission in which he catalogued and destroyed all of his possessions in a disused department store on Oxford Street and Acts of Kindness (2011) for Art on the Underground – as part of the artistic context for his proposal for the Humanitarian Aid Memorial at Gunnersbury Park.  

The evening will continue with a round table discussion between Landy, Humanitarian Aid Committee members Sir John Holmes and Sir Brendan Gormley, Gunnersbury Estate’s CEO, David Bowler and Contemporary Art Society Senior Art Producer, Jordan Kaplan, which will open up to attendees for a more informal conversation over drinks. 

This is a free event, but booking is essential. Please click here to reserve your space. 

Notes to editors

The Humanitarian Aid Memorial  

Gunnersbury Park and Museum Trust has been invited to host the world’s first dedicated Humanitarian Aid Memorial in its grounds. Internationally acclaimed artist Michael Landy, CBE, RA has been commissioned to deliver a memorial that celebrates the work and lives of humanitarians across the globe, many of whom have helped people in the communities of Hounslow and Ealing.  

The Humanitarian Aid Committee would like to gift the memorial to the local authority, who will pass over care for the work to Gunnersbury Park and Museum. The Committee has raised all of the funds necessary to make the memorial and has set aside an endowment fund to be used to pay for care and maintenance of the work.  

For more than five years, the Committee has worked with the artist and Contemporary Art Society to secure the right location for this important memorial. Previous discussions with sites managed by Historic England, the City of London and the University of Manchester have been enthusiastic, but the specific requirements of the memorial were not able to be met. 

Gunnersbury Park offers an ideal home to this much-needed memorial. Sited in easy-to-access parkland, London-based with amenities for an annual celebration and tied into the Museum’s outreach programme, plans for the memorial are welcomed by Gunnersbury’s management team, while both Hounslow and Ealing Councils are supportive of the ambitious scheme subject to planning.  

The World Humanitarian Day event held every August at Westminster Abbey would move to an annual event hosted by Gunnersbury Park, with a programme of linked events and outreach sharing the messages of humanitarian work and encouraging local people to learn more. 

The Consultation 

Gunnersbury Park is holding a public consultation between 23 June and 27 July. The consultation is punctuated by in-person events, and an online questionnaire where members of the public can share their views on the proposed artwork. 

On 24 and 25 June, representatives from the Memorial Committee, including Sir John Holmes, formerly UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, and Chair of the International Rescue Committee UK, current Trustee of the British Red Cross and Chair of the Humanitarian Memorial Committee; Dame Barbara Stocking, former CEO of Oxfam GB, and former President of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, currently heading up the international effort to coordinate future pandemic preparedness; Sir Nick Young, formerly Chief Executive of Macmillan Cancer Care, and CEO of the British Red Cross; Nick Roseveare, formerly Humanitarian Director, Oxfam GB, CEO of Bond UK, and CEO Mine Action Group; Sir Brendan Gormley, formerly CEO of DEC and Dr Elaine Laycock, who founded the movement to commemorate humanitarians, were on hand at Gunnersbury Park to share plans for the memorial with park visitors in solidarity with Refugee Week.  

The Artist 

Michael Landy was born in London in 1963; he lives and works in London. He studied at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s, with work shown at the now historic Freeze exhibition at London’s docklands in 1988. 

Landy’s concern with the attribution of value and ownership is central to his practice, notably in Break Down (2001), in which every one of the artist’s 7,227 possessions was systematically destroyed by Landy and his assistants over the course of two weeks in a former C&A department store building in Oxford Street, London. In a continued documentation of passing intimacies, for London TFL’s Art on the Underground, Landy created Acts of Kindness (2011-2012) where he invited members of the public to submit stories of kindness later featured on London Underground stations.  

In 2017, in collaboration with NEON, Greece and the public of Athens, Landy staged the large-scale exhibition Breaking News - Athens at the disused Diplarios School and building over a four-month period. It was followed later that year by DEMONSTRATION, the Fleck Celestory commission at Powerplant, Toronto, with an installation of drawings built with content submitted by the Canadian public. The interactive installation Open for Business, Landy’s ‘Brexit kiosk’, was commissioned for the first Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2018. 

Landy’s works are held in public institutions internationally, including the Tate Collection, London; the Arts Council, England; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Landy received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2021. 

Landy has developed the memorial design through collaboration with the Committee and Contemporary Art Society *Consultancy. His proposal is for a work of art that creates a space for people to walk around, through and become a part of. It would be the first permanent memorial to humanitarian workers and would aim to give friends and relatives a dedicated place close to the Round Pond to gather and reflect on their loved ones’ sacrifices and celebrate their work. 

Contemporary Art Society *Consultancy 

CAS *Consultancy has been providing strategic art and cultural services for more than 30 years. Their knowledge of the field is unparalleled, with work ranging from cultural placemaking strategies to bespoke art opportunities.  

Curating and managing projects in a range of contexts and environments, *Consultancy works with outstanding artists to produce collections, events, art strategies and public art commissions of the highest calibre, with projects contributing to the cultural life of the UK.   

What differentiates *Consultancy from other art advisors is that it is a charity. *Consultancy’s work enables Contemporary Art Society to support living artists and build critical knowledge around contemporary art. Consultancy fees support the organisation’s charitable mission: to develop public collections across the UK for the benefit of audiences everywhere.