Live Auction: Everything Must Go! with Gavin Turk

Saturday May 23rd 2026
Doors & drinks 6.30pm; Auction 7.30pm

"Ten years of artwork. One night. The van from Bank Job — still carrying the physical remains of £1.2 million of debt we abolished — going under the hammer."

For most of May, artist-activists Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell will be taking over the ground floor of Kairos with their installation Everything Must Go, featuring "Big Bang 2: The Artefact of a Debt Explosion."

Everything Must Go tells the story of the couple's decade of economic and energy interventions — the multi-layered works that became the feature documentary films Power Station (2025) and Bank Job (2021). (For show opening times, see below.)

Before the show closes, we're holding a Live Auction of selected works on Saturday May 23rd at Kairos. In addition to this live auction, there is also a Digital Auction that is now open and will run until May 31st.

The Live Auction will be conducted by our special auctioneer and friend Gavin Turk. It will be followed by Dan’s first ever cabaret performance, with a chance to sing along. It promises to be historic.

LIVE AUCTION IN THE ROOM

A number of items will be sold live from the rostrum during this live auction event on Saturday May 23rd. Lots include the original sleeping bags and jacket worn on the Walthamstow rooftop during the Power Station campaign, a bottle of vodka from Dan's first feature How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire, and an "experience" TBD. Hammer prices become the score.

DIGITAL AUCTION

Lots in the digital auction, that will open in the run-up to the live event and close on the night, will include "Big Bang 2", (the gold van itself, detonated on Docklands waste ground in 2019 in the sightline of the Canary Wharf towers, still carrying the physical remains of £1.2 million of abolished debt); an ingot and a coin, both smelted by hand at London Sculpture Workshop from the steel of the destroyed van engine; the original HSCB printing plates (the source plates for the banknotes already in the V&A's permanent collection); the original Power Station printing plates; original unique leaf prints and sunflower prints; original oil paintings; and the last surviving HSCB banknotes from Bank Job.

Big Bang 2 is being sold digitally specifically so that overseas collectors, remote bidders and institutions who can't be in the room for the live auction can also bid. The auction is open to the world. (View the digital auction site here.)

THE AUCTION IS THE ARTWORK

Dan and Hilary work in what they call Method Art — dreaming up an idea and then living it. Bank Job didn't depict debt destruction; it was an actual debt-abolition action, documented on film. Power Station didn't depict a community energy project; it was one, with their own Walthamstow street as the material.

Everything Must Go continues that lineage. The auction is not how they are funding the art. The auction is the art — a live, one-night performance work in which two artists put their archive on a rostrum and let the room decide what happens next. The ending is not written in advance.

THE TARGET IS £250,000.

• £100,000 to repay the community bondholders who funded the edit of Power Station.
• £50,000 to clear the bank loan Dan took out personally to keep the project alive.
• £100,000 to start building the next community-owned Power Station, in Clacton-on-Sea.

The blown-up van from Bank Job is being put to work one more time — as the asset that repays the bondholders of Power Station. Every lot sold is a step toward a bondholder paid back, a debt cleared, and a brick in the next power station.

EVERYTHING MUST GO

The title cuts two ways. Everything in the room must go — prints, paintings, the van, the lot. And so must everything that made the work necessary: the fossil-fuel economy, the extractive banks, the debt machine. Clearing the studio is the easy part. Clearing the system is the work.

Everything Must Go!

WHAT COMES NEXT

If the room delivers, the bondholders get paid, the loan clears, and the remaining proceeds seed the next build: a community-owned power station in Clacton-on-Sea.

Clacton matters. It's Nigel Farage's constituency and the symbolic heartland of the fossil-fuel-funded campaign against renewables in Britain. The argument pushed there — loudly, and with serious money behind it — is that clean energy is an elite project done to working-class towns rather than with them. A community-owned power station, funded by ordinary people and returning its value to the street it sits on, is the direct answer to that argument. Not an op-ed. A building. Same method as Walthamstow, new town, harder ground.

The auction closes one chapter and opens the next in the same night.

THE AUCTIONEER

The auction is being run by The Auction Collective, founded by former Christie's auctioneer Tom Best. Tom trained at Christie's London, where he was one of the youngest auctioneers ever to take to their rostrum, and has since raised over £20 million for more than 300 good causes across four continents. The Auction Collective's clients include Vivienne Westwood, Oracle Red Bull Racing, War Child UK and Fortnum & Mason. The live auctioneer on the night will be confirmed shortly.

TICKETS

Tickets are reduced for Kairos Community Members. Community Membership is automatic and free for anyone who has attended at least three talk or discussion events, at least one of those in the last nine months. The coupon code to book was sent out on the last Community Members newsletter.

For all ticket prices see below.

THE SHOW

"Everything Must Go, featuring Big Bang 2: The Artefact of a Debt Explosion", will be on the ground floor of Kairos between Saturday May 9th and Monday May 25th. During these dates, the show will be open to view on Wednesdays to Sundays, 12 midday to 6pm, and during other ticketed Kairos events.

The Opening Night Party is on Friday May 8th. We will also be screening Power Station on Saturday May 9th, screening Bank Job on Friday May 22nd, and running a money-making workshop on Sunday May 24th.

Location: Kairos, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4TG

Doors open at 6.30pm. Auction starts at 7.30, followed by cabaret performance at 8.45pm

Tickets: £5 Standard; £15 with donation.

Before requesting a discounted ticket, please consider sincerely: Are you struggling to meet your basic needs? Would you have to make a genuine sacrifice to buy a full priced ticket? Do you have reduced earnings through a lifestyle choice or rather because you're dedicating your time to unpaid work relating to the climate and nature crises or as a result of structural inequality? If you're struggling to pay even the reduced price please contact us on events@kairos.london.

Please note that most of our events take place in our basement space and we do not have a lift so our venue is not fully accessible. Please get in touch if you have accessibility issues via events@kairos.london.

You can find our returns policy here.

You can find our Club Rules, including our no phone policy, here.