Award-winning artist Joy Gregory, who has just unveiled a new project inspired by more than 100 asylum seekers at Heathrow Airport, says the UK needs more public art that confronts major issues of our time.
Gregory, known for his photography work, won the £110,000 prize. Freelands Award We were recently commissioned by Transport for London (TFL) to create 24 signs to be installed in the ticket hall of the airport’s Terminal 4 tube station.
The project, called “A Taste of Home”, combines printed images of plants with poetry by Khaled Abdallah and Warsan Shire, and was inspired by workshops that Gregory and TFL ran with asylum seekers living in temporary accommodation near the airport.
“I think this is a platform to really discuss these ideas in a broader context,” Gregory said of public art. “It’s going to be visited and viewed by millions of people, and it’s really important that we use these platforms to really talk about things that are really important to us collectively.”
“But I think that’s also the theme. [of the artwork] Very timely in terms of what happened within the government this week: flights to Rwanda were suspended; [Bibby] “Stockholm”
Gregory said many of the asylum seekers he spoke to from the Middle East, South America and around the world felt trapped in a labyrinthine system that seemed designed to strip them of their humanity.
In December 2023, the Refugee Council estimated that: More than 120,000 people were waiting No decision has yet been made on the outcome of his initial asylum application, and he remains in what has been described as a “life in limbo.”
During a workshop at the hostel where participants were staying while they processed their applications, she asked, through an interpreter and Google Translate, what their first memory of plants or flowers was. “That started a conversation,” she said.
Gregory believes the location of the work is important because it is a public place with no barriers and easy access for those who want to see it.
Gregory learned his craft on a commercial photography course at Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University) in the early 1980s, so the idea of using signage to promote A Taste of Home was a natural one. “I studied communications, art and design at Manchester,” says Gregory. “Using these tools you can really speak to a very wide audience.”
She added: “Culture and art are something that connects us all and is something we can all support. I think it’s important that art is displayed in spaces like this, rather than in gallery spaces which are seen as sacred and exclusive. Everyone can come and see this.”
With an estimated one million people passing through Terminal 4 each month, ‘A Taste of Home’ will not be the only way travellers on London’s public transport will be exposed to Gregory’s work.
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Last year, Gregory’s work was featured as a floral print on the London Underground map. A little paradiseThe design was inspired by the mini gardens that staff tend at train stations in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
The map became so popular that copies were eventually Ebay.
Food was a major theme throughout the 24 pieces that make up “A Taste of Home,” with Gregory creating prints of garlic, saffron and fennel seeds.
She said: “Someone who worked at the station came up to me yesterday and told me that their parents came from Italy in the ’70s, and they said, ‘This is our story, this is my story.’
“It really resonates with them because it’s about food. Food reminds them of home, and in many ways food is home.”
Eleanor Pinfield, director of Art on the Underground, said: “Joy Gregory’s new commission is an exploration of our city’s nature, food and plants, exploring the history and future of both Londoners who have lived in the city for generations and new arrivals.”
