Artist Michael Landy, who once destroyed his possessions in the name of art, has turned a gallery into a giant bin for the disposal of artworks.
Over the next six weeks, hundreds of works by artists both famous and unknown will be dumped in the "Art Bin" at the South London Gallery.
So far, pieces by Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, have been thrown away.
Landy said he hoped the bin would gradually fill up to create "a monument to creative failure".
Hierarchy
Members of the public have been invited to submit their own work for consideration, and they could end up in the giant container next to work by better-known artists.
"Some of this stuff is worth a lot in the outside world, but in the bin then it has no value, it has no worth," Landy told the BBC.
"In the outside world there is a certain hierarchy. In the bin there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
The giant bin fills the South London Gallery
Landy made the headlines in 2001 when he destroyed everything he owned as part of an exhibition called Break Down.
All of his 7,006 possessions - from odd socks to David Bowie singles and his Saab 900 car - were lab
Artists trash their work for Michael Landy's new exhibit
U.K. artist's Art Bin is 'a monument to creative failure'
Last Updated: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:13 PM ET Comments5Recommend9
CBC News
Trash is one way to describe an interesting new exhibit by British artist Michael Landy on display in London.
Landy opened his show, Modern Art is Rubbish, on Thursday at the South London Gallery, where it continues through March 14.
The installation features a massive, room-size glass-and-metal Art Bin that is gradually being filled with discarded art.
Describing the installation's concept as "a monument to creative failure," the 46-year-old artist started out by contacting his peers, asking them to donate works they considered poor efforts that they would normally trash, paint over or otherwise destroy.
So far, the Art Bin holds 50 of Landy's own canvases that he was unsatisfied with as well as pieces from noted peers such as Tracey Emin, Peter Blake and Damien Hirst — who donated two of his sought-after skull paintings.
Landy, who is also calling on the public to submit works to his Art Bin over the next six weeks, has said he will not turn away pieces even if he personally considers the artwork to be of excellent quality.
"I'm not a bin monitor," he told the Independent newspaper. "I have so far found myself thinking 'Wow, that's good,' but the success or failure of a work is in the eye of the beholder, and I have to follow what the artists deem to be unsuccessful."
In the bin, all works are equal in having no value, he said.
"In the outside world, there is a certain hierarchy," Landy told the BBC. "In the bin, there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
At the end of the six weeks, all the artwork in the exhibit will be disposed of.
A member of the so-called Young British Artists — the group of painters, sculptors and multimedia artists that rose to fame in the 1990s for their shocking or outrageous creations — London-born Landy is best known for his social commentary works, including 2001's Break Down.
In that exhibit, he labelled, displayed and then destroyed everything he owned, from socks to his car. The more than 7,000 items included artwork by famed colleagues, some of whom — Landy revealed — were not happy to hear of the project and asked for their pieces to be returned.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/01/29/landy-artbin-rubbish-exhibit.html#ixzz0eZxjs6Aselled and placed on a conveyer belt at the old C&A flagship store on Oxford Street, London, where they were then destroyed.
In 1997, his design for Tate Britain's annual Christmas tree featured a large bin filled with empty bottles, used wrapping paper, broken decorations and dead Christmas trees.
Turner prize-winner Hirst has contributed two of his iconic skull paintings to Landy's latest destructive exhibition.
"Damien really loved the idea... and they are good paintings," said Landy.
"There will be good artworks going into the bin, but it is up to the artist to decide what failure is."
"I do find myself thinking 'oh that one looks good' but then I have to remember what I'm doing this for."
At the end of the exhibition the bin will be emptied into a landfill site.
The exhibition will run at the South London Gallery from 29 January until 14 March.Now Trashing Michael Landy’s ‘Art Bin’
February 1, 2010, 1:02 pm — Updated: 1:02 pm -->
Courtesy of Michael Landy Michael Landy has began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can for art.
The British artist Michael Landy will be destroying hundreds of works of art this year, even though he’s gotten in trouble for it before. In his 2001 performance, “Break Down,” Landy shredded everything he owned — 7,227 items in total. Members of the public were most affected by the disposal of his car, his love letters, family heirlooms and the entire archive of his own art. However, he received most criticism from within the art world for destroying his art collection: works by fellow Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, most of which he had received as gifts.
Now Landy is about to do the same to hundreds more works of art, contributed by artists from all over the world. On Jan. 29 he began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can called “Art Bin,” which will contain stacks of artworks Landy is selecting from online submissions to be destroyed. Works will be added throughout the exhibition, and when it closes on March 14, they will all be disposed of.
“In this country it is legal to destroy an artwork if you are the owner,” Landy said in his East London studio as he reviewed the artworks submitted for “Art Bin,” “but you can’t add to it, you can’t change its color — that’s a no-no. It’s bizarre. But within the art world, quite a few people did have issues with destruction of artworks in ‘Break Down.’ Now, just when people can bring themselves to talk to me again, I’ve raised it again. I’m already in trouble. I’ve already had a telling off.”
Indeed the very idea of destroying artworks elicits some extreme reactions as it recalls in many minds the Nazis’ destruction of Jewish and “degenerate” art, and centuries of religious iconoclasm, including the Taliban blowing up the fourth-century Banyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2000. Another common association is the surprisingly frequent phenomenon of art vandalism, which ranges from a sufferer of the so-called “David syndrome” taking a sledgehammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972, while yelling “I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,” to a guard at the Whitney adorning a Lichtenstein with a love heart and the touching inscription “I love you Tushee, Love, Buns” in 1991.
Though many deplore such actions, elements of the artistic avant-garde have long viewed the destruction of old artworks as a necessary condition to making art new and relevant, following Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto calling for museums to be demolished and Antonin Artaud’s 1938 rallying cry, “No more masterpieces.” Tellingly, the best-known example of art vandalism in New York was the spray painting of the words “KILL LIES ALL” across Picasso’s “Guernica” by the prominent art-world figure Tony Shafrazi in 1974. He later explained his actions as trying to “retrieve [art] from art history and give it life.”
Yet even though he is an actual destroyer of art, Landy seems an unlikely inheritor of the mantle of these fanatics, schizophrenics and provocateurs. With “Art Bin” he grapples with issues around the value of art, success and failure in art, and the moral rights of artists. His starting point for the project was the realization that artists typically destroy their own works when they are dissatisfied with them — he cites Jasper Johns and Frank Auerbach as artists who have discussed this publicly. Landy initially thought of “Art Bin” as “a monument to creative failure” — a kind of collegiate assisted euthanasia for art, aggregating and destroying his own and other artists’ works, which, according to each artist’s own criteria, “got it wrong.”
However, in looking at the art being submitted over the art-bin.co.uk Web site, it is clear that artists are actually offering up works that aren’t failures at all (for example, works from editions in which others from the same edition are still being sold). While he has not attracted a lot of “big names” yet, many emerging artists clearly view sacrificing their work to “Art Bin” as a privilege rather than an admission of defeat.
Landy is bracing himself for questioning over what ends up included in “Art Bin” and what is excluded (though as “Art Bin” is an artwork, not a competition or a curated exhibition, there should be no onus on the artist to explain himself). He is also dreading “the kind of media coverage that makes you cringe as an artist” — from a British media that hasn’t evolved much since it published the headline “What a Load of Rubbish” when the Tate exhibited Carl Andre’s array of bricks, “Equivalent VIII,” in 1976. After all, unlike the vandalism of older masterpieces, the destruction of contemporary art, especially when it is done inadvertently by cleaners and sanitation workers, is usually presented by the press as an irony rather than a moral outrage.
“If fact,” Landy says, “most people feel more angry about the artworks contributing to landfill in the end than the destruction of art.” While the environmentalists are currently giving him grief, expect to hear collectors complaining too, because at the end of an important art event, there will be nothing left or created for them to buy.
Artists and art owners who have obtained permission from artists may submit works to “Art Bin” at www.art-bin.co.uk .
Over the next six weeks, hundreds of works by artists both famous and unknown will be dumped in the "Art Bin" at the South London Gallery.
So far, pieces by Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, have been thrown away.
Landy said he hoped the bin would gradually fill up to create "a monument to creative failure".
Hierarchy
Members of the public have been invited to submit their own work for consideration, and they could end up in the giant container next to work by better-known artists.
"Some of this stuff is worth a lot in the outside world, but in the bin then it has no value, it has no worth," Landy told the BBC.
"In the outside world there is a certain hierarchy. In the bin there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
The giant bin fills the South London Gallery
Landy made the headlines in 2001 when he destroyed everything he owned as part of an exhibition called Break Down.
All of his 7,006 possessions - from odd socks to David Bowie singles and his Saab 900 car - were lab
Artists trash their work for Michael Landy's new exhibit
U.K. artist's Art Bin is 'a monument to creative failure'
Last Updated: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:13 PM ET Comments5Recommend9
CBC News
Trash is one way to describe an interesting new exhibit by British artist Michael Landy on display in London.
Landy opened his show, Modern Art is Rubbish, on Thursday at the South London Gallery, where it continues through March 14.
The installation features a massive, room-size glass-and-metal Art Bin that is gradually being filled with discarded art.
Describing the installation's concept as "a monument to creative failure," the 46-year-old artist started out by contacting his peers, asking them to donate works they considered poor efforts that they would normally trash, paint over or otherwise destroy.
So far, the Art Bin holds 50 of Landy's own canvases that he was unsatisfied with as well as pieces from noted peers such as Tracey Emin, Peter Blake and Damien Hirst — who donated two of his sought-after skull paintings.
Landy, who is also calling on the public to submit works to his Art Bin over the next six weeks, has said he will not turn away pieces even if he personally considers the artwork to be of excellent quality.
"I'm not a bin monitor," he told the Independent newspaper. "I have so far found myself thinking 'Wow, that's good,' but the success or failure of a work is in the eye of the beholder, and I have to follow what the artists deem to be unsuccessful."
In the bin, all works are equal in having no value, he said.
"In the outside world, there is a certain hierarchy," Landy told the BBC. "In the bin, there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
At the end of the six weeks, all the artwork in the exhibit will be disposed of.
A member of the so-called Young British Artists — the group of painters, sculptors and multimedia artists that rose to fame in the 1990s for their shocking or outrageous creations — London-born Landy is best known for his social commentary works, including 2001's Break Down.
In that exhibit, he labelled, displayed and then destroyed everything he owned, from socks to his car. The more than 7,000 items included artwork by famed colleagues, some of whom — Landy revealed — were not happy to hear of the project and asked for their pieces to be returned.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/01/29/landy-artbin-rubbish-exhibit.html#ixzz0eZxjs6Aselled and placed on a conveyer belt at the old C&A flagship store on Oxford Street, London, where they were then destroyed.
In 1997, his design for Tate Britain's annual Christmas tree featured a large bin filled with empty bottles, used wrapping paper, broken decorations and dead Christmas trees.
Turner prize-winner Hirst has contributed two of his iconic skull paintings to Landy's latest destructive exhibition.
"Damien really loved the idea... and they are good paintings," said Landy.
"There will be good artworks going into the bin, but it is up to the artist to decide what failure is."
"I do find myself thinking 'oh that one looks good' but then I have to remember what I'm doing this for."
At the end of the exhibition the bin will be emptied into a landfill site.
The exhibition will run at the South London Gallery from 29 January until 14 March.Now Trashing Michael Landy’s ‘Art Bin’
February 1, 2010, 1:02 pm — Updated: 1:02 pm -->
Courtesy of Michael Landy Michael Landy has began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can for art.
The British artist Michael Landy will be destroying hundreds of works of art this year, even though he’s gotten in trouble for it before. In his 2001 performance, “Break Down,” Landy shredded everything he owned — 7,227 items in total. Members of the public were most affected by the disposal of his car, his love letters, family heirlooms and the entire archive of his own art. However, he received most criticism from within the art world for destroying his art collection: works by fellow Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, most of which he had received as gifts.
Now Landy is about to do the same to hundreds more works of art, contributed by artists from all over the world. On Jan. 29 he began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can called “Art Bin,” which will contain stacks of artworks Landy is selecting from online submissions to be destroyed. Works will be added throughout the exhibition, and when it closes on March 14, they will all be disposed of.
“In this country it is legal to destroy an artwork if you are the owner,” Landy said in his East London studio as he reviewed the artworks submitted for “Art Bin,” “but you can’t add to it, you can’t change its color — that’s a no-no. It’s bizarre. But within the art world, quite a few people did have issues with destruction of artworks in ‘Break Down.’ Now, just when people can bring themselves to talk to me again, I’ve raised it again. I’m already in trouble. I’ve already had a telling off.”
Indeed the very idea of destroying artworks elicits some extreme reactions as it recalls in many minds the Nazis’ destruction of Jewish and “degenerate” art, and centuries of religious iconoclasm, including the Taliban blowing up the fourth-century Banyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2000. Another common association is the surprisingly frequent phenomenon of art vandalism, which ranges from a sufferer of the so-called “David syndrome” taking a sledgehammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972, while yelling “I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,” to a guard at the Whitney adorning a Lichtenstein with a love heart and the touching inscription “I love you Tushee, Love, Buns” in 1991.
Though many deplore such actions, elements of the artistic avant-garde have long viewed the destruction of old artworks as a necessary condition to making art new and relevant, following Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto calling for museums to be demolished and Antonin Artaud’s 1938 rallying cry, “No more masterpieces.” Tellingly, the best-known example of art vandalism in New York was the spray painting of the words “KILL LIES ALL” across Picasso’s “Guernica” by the prominent art-world figure Tony Shafrazi in 1974. He later explained his actions as trying to “retrieve [art] from art history and give it life.”
Yet even though he is an actual destroyer of art, Landy seems an unlikely inheritor of the mantle of these fanatics, schizophrenics and provocateurs. With “Art Bin” he grapples with issues around the value of art, success and failure in art, and the moral rights of artists. His starting point for the project was the realization that artists typically destroy their own works when they are dissatisfied with them — he cites Jasper Johns and Frank Auerbach as artists who have discussed this publicly. Landy initially thought of “Art Bin” as “a monument to creative failure” — a kind of collegiate assisted euthanasia for art, aggregating and destroying his own and other artists’ works, which, according to each artist’s own criteria, “got it wrong.”
However, in looking at the art being submitted over the art-bin.co.uk Web site, it is clear that artists are actually offering up works that aren’t failures at all (for example, works from editions in which others from the same edition are still being sold). While he has not attracted a lot of “big names” yet, many emerging artists clearly view sacrificing their work to “Art Bin” as a privilege rather than an admission of defeat.
Landy is bracing himself for questioning over what ends up included in “Art Bin” and what is excluded (though as “Art Bin” is an artwork, not a competition or a curated exhibition, there should be no onus on the artist to explain himself). He is also dreading “the kind of media coverage that makes you cringe as an artist” — from a British media that hasn’t evolved much since it published the headline “What a Load of Rubbish” when the Tate exhibited Carl Andre’s array of bricks, “Equivalent VIII,” in 1976. After all, unlike the vandalism of older masterpieces, the destruction of contemporary art, especially when it is done inadvertently by cleaners and sanitation workers, is usually presented by the press as an irony rather than a moral outrage.
“If fact,” Landy says, “most people feel more angry about the artworks contributing to landfill in the end than the destruction of art.” While the environmentalists are currently giving him grief, expect to hear collectors complaining too, because at the end of an important art event, there will be nothing left or created for them to buy.
Artists and art owners who have obtained permission from artists may submit works to “Art Bin” at www.art-bin.co.uk .
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