Two works by the artists Michael Landy and Shaqúelle Whyte have been acquired at Frieze London through the CAS Collections Fund at Frieze 2025 for the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. In anticipation of the Walker’s 150th anniversary in 2027, the works selected by this year’s Collections Fund at Frieze Committee and the Walker’s curators draw from prominent themes in the museum’s vast collection while also signifying a refresh of its contemporary collection.
Known for its rich collection of religious works from the 15th century onwards, featuring Old and Modern masters including Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet and Degas, the Walker’s celebrated contemporary collection exists alongside the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize, first established in 1957 to support the work of contemporary artists. A priority of its collecting practice today is to acquire works that engage with the historic collection but also embrace artists of global majority backgrounds and perspectives.
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Michael Landy
Multi-Saint, 2013, Michael Landy
Reflecting the museum’s historic collection of Christian iconographical works, Landy’s interactive and kinetic work Multi-Saint, represents the saints – St Catherine, St Lucy, St Peter Martyr, St Lawrence and St Michael – along with their identifying symbols. The sculptural assemblage also draws upon modern references, in particular, Swiss artist Jean Tinguely’s foot-pedal operated kinetic sculptures, which Landy first encountered as a student at Tate Britain in 1982. Created after Landy’s National Gallery residency (2010–2012) and subsequent exhibition Michael Landy: Saints Alive in 2013, Multi-Saint captures fragments of Christian iconography from artists in the Gallery’s collection: Carlo Crivelli, Ambroggio Bergonone and Hans Memling. His resulting sculpture satirises the canon of art history in a delightfully playful and provocative way that directly engages the viewer.
Shaqúelle Whyte
In an embroiled fashion, 2025, Shaqúelle Whyte
Known for his large-scale figurative paintings that propose elusive, imagined spaces, Whyte’s In an embroiled fashion continues his characteristic style of loosely rendered, energetic brushwork using a colour palette of deep and rich hues. Featuring two male figures engaged in a physical wrestle, Whyte interrogates the human body through paint without revealing his subjects’ identity, thus adding to a pervasive sense of mystery. In the foreground, a third, nude male walks towards us, though his head turns backwards, as if he has detected something – or someone – beyond our gaze. Set against a shadowy, rural landscape, these figures invite further speculation. Narrative plays a key part in Whyte’s work; though his enigmatic paintings carry certain familiar motifs in a nonlinear way. In this sense, each painting can be read individually whilst also sparking dialogue with other works by the artist.
Michael Landy
Michael Landy CBE, RA (London, b.1963, UK) lives and works in London. Known for his conceptually-rooted work that often softly critiques or playfully challenges dominant systems, whether capitalism, consumer culture or religious iconography, as seen in the selected work Multi-Saint (2013). Best known for his work Break Down, 2001, in which Landy destroyed 7,227 of his belongings in a public exhibition held in an empty shop on Oxford Street, he later created the work Art Bin, 2010, where he invited artists to throw away failed or rejected artworks into a giant transparent bin in the South London Gallery. Studying at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s, Landy’s work came to prominence when shown at the now historic Freeze exhibition at London’s docklands in 1988. 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 was elected as a Royal Academician in May 2008 and received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2021.
Shaqúelle Whyte
Shaqúelle Whyte (Wolverhampton, b.2000, UK) lives and works in London. Rising in recognition for his psychologically-charged, figurative paintings, Whyte’s enigmatic works allude to surreal, otherworldly narratives which are nonetheless rooted in his own experiences, as well as representations of Black masculinity, mythological tales and the artist’s musical influences. Whyte’s paintings conjure a sense of palpable tension and dynamism. Graduating from the Slade School of Fine Arts followed by the Royal College of Art, Whyte has since been the recipient of the Arts Council Collection, Frieze London 2024 Award. Whyte’s work can be found in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Arts Council, London, Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC, and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.
ABOUT THE COLLECTIONS FUND AT FRIEZE
Founded in 2012, the Contemporary Art Society’s Collections Fund is designed to support the acquisition of significant contemporary works for Contemporary Art Society museum members across the UK. For 2025, the Contemporary Art Society is once again partnering with Frieze London, with the Collections Fund at Frieze purchasing two major works at the fair for the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool. A key aim of the scheme is to draw together the knowledge, experience and expertise of private collectors with that of museum curators in a programme of research leading to an acquisition. Past acquisitions through the Collections Fund have included works by Simon Fujiwara for Leeds Art Gallery (2013); Ben Rivers for Royal Pavilion & Museum, Brighton & Hove, and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (2014); Hito Steyerl for GoMA, Glasgow (2015); John Akomfrah and Kader Attia for MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2016); Dineo Seshee Bopape for Towner Eastbourne (2017); Kehinde Wiley and Zadie Xa for The Box, Plymouth in 2018; and Zanele Muholi for Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery in 2019; Sunil Gupta, Hetain Patel, and Billie Zangewa for The Harris, Preston in 2021; Ibrahim Mahama for Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery (2022); and Grada Kilomba, Goshka Macuga, and Pamela Phatismo Sunstrum for The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge (2023), and Haegue Yang and Nour Jaouda for The Hepworth Wakefield (2024).
The 2025 Collections Fund at Frieze is co-chaired by Nicola Blake and Liesl Fichardt. The committee includes Nicola Avery-Gee, Whitney Gore, Soo Hitchin, Stephanie Holmquist, Helen Janecek, Sophie Kingsley, Béatrice Lupton, Andrew Pirrie-Franks, Katrina Reitman, Susan Rosenberg, Varvara Roza, Andreas Siegfried and Pamela Stanger.
About the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool
The Walker Art Gallery stands among Europe's finest museums, showcasing an internationally significant collection spanning centuries. Its Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque displays sit alongside masterpieces from British artists including Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Barbara Hepworth and Lubaina Himid, complemented by celebrated Pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist collections. Now in its 68th year, the John Moores Painting Prize returns to the gallery in 2025, continuing its legacy of championing contemporary painting.
