A new public commission by Michael Landy, Lemon Meringue (2024), is now on view at East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.

Lemon Meringue celebrates traditional and newly invented Cockney rhyming slang phrases, in a series of fluorescent signs positioned along the waterfront at East Bank. Unique to east London, this vernacular form of speech replaces common words with a rhyming expression. In Landy’s installation, each rhyming phrase marks a place, object, or activity in the landscape through a playful take on signposting. The artwork reflects the area’s rich and creative past, while acknowledging the fluid ways that language can evolve, including new terms that speak to more recent diasporic influences on this area of London.

Commissioned as part of the Waterfront Art within Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park curated by Louise Trodden on behalf of London Legacy Development Corporation.

East Bank is the cultural quarter at the heart of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. It includes BBC Music Studios and V&A East Storehouse and Museum (opening in 2025), Sadler’s Wells East (opening in 2024) and London College of Fashion, UAL and UCL (University College London) (opened in 2023).

Michael Landy
Lemon Meringue, 2024

East Bank
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London