As the wider world becomes increasingly embattled, a welcome dose of positivity can be found at Thomas Dane’s outpost in Naples, a city which has itself weathered centuries of turbulence. The gallery’s Art Lovers show offers an affectionately affirmative celebration of the artist couple Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing, who have lived together for more than two decades but always worked separately. Now, for the first time, the duo have joined forces to present new work made in response to Naples, alongside older pieces that have been chosen to chime with the setting.
The show is full of surprises. I had no idea that, a year after Wearing had made her landmark work Signs (1992-93), in which she asked passersby on the streets of London to be photographed holding up signs conveying their inner thoughts, she was invited to do likewise in Naples. For Art Lovers, Wearing has revisited the Naples version. It is poignant yet also oddly comforting to see how the hopes and fears of the city’s residents three decades ago continue to resonate today. “I need quiet,” says a well-dressed businessman. “I hate the fascists,” declares a young girl. The sign held by a cheerfully smiling woman asks: “Do we realise that we are going to die?”
Gillian Wearing, an extract from Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs; that say what someone else wants you to say (Spero che tutti; un giorno possano essere felici come lo sono io adesso) (1994/2024) © Gillian Wearing. Courtesy Maureen Paley; London; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery; New York and Regen Projects; Los Angeles
Along with more intimate watercolours there is a haunting Edward Hopper-like image of the two of them alone in a theatre
I also didn’t know that Wearing is such a good painter. Early on, she apparently loved painting but moved away from it while studying at Goldsmiths, London, and only rediscovered that enthusiasm during lockdown. Art Lovers reveals she honed her skills in the medium during a residency with Landy in Naples last year. Along with a number of more intimate watercolours of them both reading and hanging out in their apartment, there is a small, intense double portrait in oils, and a haunting Edward Hopper-like image of the two of them alone in a theatre watching a pair of commedia dell’arte performers.
Despite joking that he would never have gone out with Wearing if he had been aware of her painterly inclinations, Landy himself picked up a paintbrush to record their recent Neapolitan sojourn in a series of tenderly humorous pen and watercolour studies, including one where he literally embraces his surroundings by hugging a classical column. He even inserts himself into the art historical tradition of the Grand Tour by making an exquisite little ink-and-watercolour study of the picturesque Grotto of Posillipo, a favourite subject for earlier painters including Turner and Piranesi.
Grisly ends
Naples is a city that groans with Christian iconography, and Catholicism reverberates throughout Art Lovers courtesy of Landy’s huge, cacophonous animatronic sculpture Multi-Saint. This Tinguely-esque contraption, which Landy created during his 2010-12 residency at London’s National Gallery, involves a mashup of Catholic martyrs noisily enacting their grisly ends when activated by a foot pedal. In Naples, it is joined by a new kinetic sculpture modelled on San Gennaro, the city’s decapitated patron saint—gouts of fake blood gush from the severed neck.
Landy’s Multi-Saint automaton at the Art Lovers show in Naples re-enacts numerous gruesome martyrdoms Photo: M3 Studio; Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery
This religious aura permeates other works in the show, including Landy’s two wall-mounted car covers, originally created in 1988 for his degree show and shown in the legendary Freeze exhibition curated by his Goldsmiths contemporary Damien Hirst that year. In Naples what were originally urban found objects have been reformed in draped bolts of ultramarine polyester—making them shiny and synthetic, but nevertheless the colour of the Virgin’s gown, resulting in a very different set of associations.
Wearing pays tribute, meanwhile, to secular deities of Italian cinema in a new series of photographic portraits in which, with help of wigs and silicone masks, she transforms herself into figures such as the actor Monica Vitti and the director Federico Fellini. Also on show is a procession of bronze maquettes she used for large-scale public sculpture projects devoted to exploring ideas of what constitutes a “normal” family. Shown in a grand first-floor gallery overlooking the bay of Naples, these works gain a particularly ceremonious feel.
Installation view of Gillian Wearing, Me as Anna Magnani (2024, left) and Me as Monica Vitti in a wig (2024, right) and at Art Lovers © Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing.; Courtesy the artists and Thomas Dane Gallery.; Photo: M3 Studio srl
Spending time in the majestic, battered city of Naples also inspired Landy to rekindle his series of etchings of common urban weeds from 2002. Back then, Landy told me he wanted to pay tribute with the weeds project to these “marvellous optimistic things” that flourish in the most inhospitable of urban landscapes. More than two decades later, he still holds this view. “Weeds are ingenious at finding ways to survive and move on, and I want to honour them,” he says.
The nimble hardy weed is a fitting hero for our perilous times, and I’m grateful to Art Lovers for this timely reminder of the importance of paying close attention to our relationship with people as well as with places, and indeed with plants.
• Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing: Art Lovers, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, until 12 April
