Art Lovers. Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing. Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples – Italy

Art Lovers, is a collaborative exhibition by Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing. The exhibition will present new work by the artists responding to Naples and its history, alongside a selection of works spanning the last three decades of the artists’ careers, reflecting their ongoing personal and artistic relationship. Art Lovers will be Landy and Wearing’s first exhibition conceived together in over 20 years.

Landy and Wearing both came to prominence in the 1990s after studying at Goldsmiths in London, where they first met, in the late 1980s. Landy’s early work from this period presented a satirical view on the political and social climate of neoliberal Britain, producing works and installations in various media that interrogated issues of labour, consumerism and value. These concerns led to the landmark work Break Down (2001), in which Landy and a group of assistants systematically destroyed each and every one of the artist’s 7,227 possessions over the course of two weeks, in an audacious performative act staged in a former C&A department store building on Oxford Street, London. In the aftermath of Break Down, a tabula rasa in a creative and personal sense, the first works Landy produced were delicate etchings of common weeds found around London – an apposite subject matter symbolic of survival and renewal – which became the Nourishment series (2002–ongoing). For this exhibition Landy presents a group of new etchings of weeds encountered in the derelict nooks and on the roadsides of Naples, made during several visits to the city in 2024. The meticulously intricate renderings honour the overlooked and celebrate resilience, in a poetic ode to the city itself.

In conversation with the etchings are works on paper from Landy’s recent Future Ruins series, depicting existing landmarks – including the grand Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome – in imaginary states of decay. Referencing the long Western tradition of artists captivated by ruins both real and imagined, including the eighteenth-century cultural craze for rediscovering and even recreating ‘decorative’ ruins in England and France, Landy’s future ruins plumb the political and emotional registers of the motif, with its embedded notions of value, history, loss and nostalgia.

Michael Landy was born in London, UK in 1963, where he lives and works. He attended Goldsmiths College, London, in 1988. Landy was elected as a Royal Academician in May 2008 and received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2021. Selected solo and group shows include: Welcome to Essex, Firstsite, Colchester, England (2021); Scaled-Down, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, England (2018); Open for Business at the first Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018); DEMONSTRATION, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2017-18); Breaking News, Sperone Westwater, New York NY (2017); Breaking News – Athens, Neon/Diplarios School, Athens, Greece (2017); Out of Order, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2016); Saints Alive, National Gallery, London, England (2013); Michael Landy: Four Walls, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England (2013); Art World Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London, England (2011); Art Bin, South London Gallery, London, England (2010). Selected public collections include: Tate Collection, London; the Arts Council England; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Royal Academy, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN.

Born in 1963 in Birmingham, UK, Gillian Wearing lives and works in London. Wearing won the Turner Prize in 1997 and was awarded an OBE in 2011 and a CBE in 2019 for contribution to the arts. A major survey exhibition Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA in November 2021. In 2018, she was commissioned by the Mayor of London to create a statue of Suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square. Recent solo exhibitions include reflections, Regen Projects, Los Angeles CA (2023); Gillian Wearing: Editing Life, PHOTO 2022: International Festival of Photography, ACMI, Melbourne, Australia (2022); Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY (2021); Gillian Wearing: Rock ‘n’ Roll 70, Central Gallery, Moody Center for The Arts, Rice University, Houston TX (2019); Life: Gillian Wearing, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati OH (2018); Behind the mask, another mask: Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun, National Portrait Gallery, London, England (2017); Family Stories, The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017); Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, ICA Boston, Boston MA (2016); Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain (2015); A Real Birmingham Family, Centenary Square, Library of Birmingham, Birmingham, England and We Are Here, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, England (2014); Whitechapel Gallery, London, England, toured to K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany and Pinakothek der Moderne, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany (2012); A Real Birmingham Family, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England (2011); Confessions: Portraits, vidéos, Musée Rodin, Paris, France (2009); Living Proof, ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia (2006); Album, Maureen Paley, London, England (2003).