In Conversation with Michael Landy: live recording and audience Q&A

As part of the public consultation for Michael Landy's proposed Humanitarian Aid Memorial at Gunnersbury Park, *Consultancy hosted a community event at Gunnersbury Park Museum where the team shared the latest plans for the artwork with local residents and invited audience feedback. 

The event began with a presentation by Michael Landy CBA RA who talked through a selection of previous works including Breakdown (2001), and Acts of Kindness (2011), outlining how they've helped shape his concept for the Humanitarian Aid Memorial. This was followed by a panel discussion between Landy, Humanitarian Aid Committee member Sir Brendan Gormley, Gunnersbury Estate’s CEO, David Bowler and Contemporary Art Society Senior Art Producer, Jordan Kaplan. The discussion touched on site selection and the methodology for this, artwork materials and fabrication, and the ambition for the artwork to be ascended into Gunnersbury's permanent collection. An audio recording of Michael Landy's presentation, and the panel discussion is available below - the subsequent audience Q&A has also been transcribed. 

Audience member 1: I am a local person, and I also love Gunnersbury Park. I’ve watched the space completely transform over the years. For this sculpture to be a focus point and provide moments for contemplation within a much larger contemplative space, I think is just a fantastic offer. It’s going to be in brass? 

Michael Landy:  It will be in steel. It’s painted steel, 7 metres in diameter. They’re like paper cut-outs and will be human size. I think the average human height is 1.7 metres. It will be green and white, like in the illustrations. 

Jordan Kaplan: There are some material samples outside - the steel is 25mm deep.

Audience member 1: Wow, so very robust. How will it be placed in the ground? 

Jordan Kaplan: We’re looking at the foundation designs this week. We’ve just had a soil survey so we know exactly what is underneath the sculpture. There are different ways of making the foundations but one of the tricks here is to make sure the foundations don’t interfere with anything Historic England are looking to preserve. 

Audience member 1: I think it’s a beautiful location, and the artwork will be a huge draw for the area. Thank you. 

Audience member 2: Firstly I just want to say congratulations on reaching this point with the project after such a long time. I’m a resident, I live in Ealing and like you say I think this artwork will really put the area on the map and have national, and international significance. I was thinking about diversity and diaspora within the borough, for whom I think the memorial could have real relevance and resonance - particularly as it probes questions around identity and belonging. Often these communities don’t have a place to consider these questions, so spaces like this, especially within parks, are very important. I just wondered what your plans are to engage these communities, and also young people, to get them thinking about their own stories, about place, about other countries. 

David Bowler: One of the things we need to do is understand our limits, and know when we need to work in partnership with other organisations to expand our reach. Once we’ve closed this process, what we really want to do is spend time with organisations like Young Ealing to make the artwork, and accompanying programme as relevant as possible. We have a lot of expertise working with primary schools but we need to work with a higher age group too. We really need to capture and engage with the teen-early twenties group and would love to work with you on this. 

Jordan Kaplan: Part of our ambition is for this not to be a static piece of steel and instead ensure it serves as a catalyst for human activity now, and in the future. Outreach and education are priorities - we want the artwork to have added value. 

Sir Brendan Gormley: Watching Michael work - his practice is all about inclusivity. The proposed piece is not threatening, it’s inviting. We get a certain amount of stick for it being too simplistic but it’s a visual language we feel will resonate with all ages. It’s graffiti proof too. 

Michael Landy: It’s immediately clear what the artwork is depicting. It’s illustrative, not abstract.

Jordan Kaplan: Michael has worked up the drawings for all of the figures and handwritten the stories which appear on the surface of the work. In terms of the fabrication process, steel frames will be created and sprayed in a hard-wearing automotive paint. A sacrificial layer will be added at the end so that as and when graffiti appears, it can be easily washed off. The committee who are funding the work have made sure there’s a substantial maintenance fee so Gunnersbury Park are not lumbered with any maintenance related bills after install. 

David Bowler: It’s going to be, we hope, ascended into the museum collection. We’re trying to build a museum collection which reflects contemporary issues. One of the things we’re doing is changing our collecting practice to ensure we get objects and ephemera from diverse communities, some of which arrived in the UK 60 plus years ago. Heritage is a malleable, mobile, changing thing and we need to ensure that we have a relevant collection if we are going to be a museum for the future. We feel that this work by Michael Landy will kick-start this new wave of collecting activity without diminishing the 50,000 objects that have already been obtained on behalf of the museum, and which we hope to bring to site within the next 5 years. 

Audience member 3: I’m a friend of Gunnersbury Park, and having listened to Michael speak, many of our anxieties have been put to rest. However I really feel you have missed a trick not involving the local community in the process. It does feel like you have landed this artwork like an aircraft in the park. Nobody has been consulted which is very disappointing. This doesn’t feel like a consultation or a proposal, it feels like this is a certainty and we do, as you know, have concerns about the location of the artwork. 

Jordan Kaplan: Nothing is set in stone but we do have an obligation to come in with a set of designs for you to respond to. What I would say is that David and I have put a lot of time and consideration into working out an appropriate site for the artwork - we have a complex matrix with a set of criteria to measure against. We have been very mindful but I appreciate there can be a difference of opinion in terms of whether we are being respectful enough to this particular site. What I would say is, we have not landed this artwork in the park, it doesn’t exist, it is a proposal - a very well thought through proposal. We are more than happy to have discussions with the Friends of Gunnersbury and recognise that you are an important group of people who have a vested interest in the park. 

Audience member 3: I think it’s about communication, we would just like to know more, it’s no more than that. 

Michael Landy: There’s a reason we have placed the artwork in such close proximity to the Museum - it has a dual purpose, it’s a space to commemorate but also to promote humanitarian ideals and to celebrate humanitarian work. With this in mind, it can’t just be parked up in a corner somewhere. 

David Bowler: Can I just add, in terms of the safeguarding of the space, we’ve already had a couple of hours with Historic England who unsurprisingly took a position that we must justify the potential harm to the space. We have therefore employed a specialist to carry out a Heritage impact assessment because we have to show Historic England that out of 6 potential sites at Gunnersbury this is the appropriate one. We will be engaging further with them as we will with the London Borough of Hounslow’s Planning Department because we cannot put a permanent fixture in a public park without the appropriate planning permission. So there are institutional backstops that we must engage with. 

The issue around whether we could have taken this to a wider public before this evening is inevitably one of those judgement calls about how, when and why - we did do a weekend of consultation during ACAA’s Refugee Festival where the responses were incredibly positive, and the consultation is absolutely ongoing. 

We do think this is an extraordinary opportunity for our community. I’m just a steward of Gunnersbury - we’re trying to make this the best place we possibly can, we take that stewardship very seriously and that means we have to be sensitive and listen. What I loved when Michael spoke about his project for Art on the Underground is that it was all about kindness - this is what sits at the very core of the humanitarian movement, it is about kindness and consideration for our fellow people. What better value to promote in a park that is open to all. I recognise, Val, that we need to have some dialogue along the way and we will definitely be doing that. 

Sir Brendan Gormley: I certainly gave you a sense of the sort of principles we brought to Gunnersbury, and the boxes that needed to be ticked. We really want it to be accessible and the suggested site does balance tranquility and footfall, though you may disagree. 

Audience member 4: Michael, would you repeat the process of Breakdown again? 

Michael Landy: What now? No, I think it’s one of those things you do when you’re 37. I almost wanted someone like Elton John to commission me to destroy all of his worldly belongings. 21 years ago everything was more analogue, we had VHS and 6x4 photographs. You need that physical stuff to break down, whereas now a lot of stuff is in the cloud. It wouldn’t be so much fun. 

Have you considered the artwork in the context of the anthropocene? 

Jordan: I think you’ll see this context in the stories we’ve received, some of which will be hand-painted on the artwork - we are dealing directly with people who have been impacted by climate change and who no doubt will continue to be as we enter climate breakdown. I hope we’ll be able to expand on this as the ephemera and thinking around the memorial become richer and deeper. We are actually looking at having some seating, and a plaque with a QR code directing visitors to the Humanitarian Aid Memorial website. This will be a place where people can log memories, stories and experiences related to the artwork. 

Audience member 5: Do you see destroying your belongings as an act of privilege? 

Michael Landy: Yes completely, it’s a luxury. But my intention was to be provocative and get people talking about their own consumption. 

Audience member 6: Did you feel like you were almost reborn after Breakdown?

There was a sense of liberation, it was like witnessing your own death. People turned up that I hadn’t seen for years - like they would at a funeral. But after a period of time you fall back into old ways. I couldn’t make any work for a year and then I made some weed etchings - weeds kind of grow in cracks on the street which I found interesting. I just wanted to work with a plant and etch all its attributes - a simple, stripped back process. It was quite profound - you go back to basics. That’s how I began again. 

For more information about this project and previous consultation events, please click here.