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South London Gallery Exhibition
Art Bin 29 January – 14 March 2010
Most people remember Michael Landy for coming under the public spotlight nine years ago for a project that he called Break Down. Landy occupied an empty department store in Oxford Street and systematically destroyed all 7,227 of his worldly possessions, including his car, the shirt off his back and his passport. He has more recently decided to keep to a similar theme by transforming the South London Gallery into an Art Bin so that other artists can dispose of their work.The South London Gallery is in the heart of Peckham, next to Camberwell College of Art.
Arriving at the gallery, the exhibition was clear to see from the entrance, as it is huge and made from clear toughened Perspex with a re-inforced steel frame. It needs to be tough, because some of the pieces of work that are being thrown into it are cumbersome and being thrown with great emotional gusto.
Adjoining The Bin there was a metal staircase that looked like a fire-escape made for an American apartment block and standing at the top were two artists casting their abstract sculptures and paintings away forever. There will be hundreds of different reasons why art was being cast away, such as, “It’s never going to be a masterpiece or, I can’t get the face quite right, or this reminds me of a past love or even, as one enormous piece was, taking up too much room in the garage. I think a great piece of reflective work could be produced, just on the artists’ reasons for wanting to getting rid of them.
The problem is of course, the press have had a field day with this particular exhibition. They have related it to Tracey Emin’s My Bed installation at the Saatchi Gallery and the pile of bricks in the Tate Gallery, by asking questions such as “Is it a pile of old rubbish?”, which fuels the debate even further. But secretly I’m sure Michael is happy to have all this free publicity because as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
When I spoke to Michael, I asked him what will happen to the pieces once the exhibition ends? He replied, “Everything is going to landfill. As the artists have brought their art to be disposed of, we must do that on their behalf.” Can you imagine if one of Damien Hirst’s skull paintings that he had thrown into The Bin, suddenly came up for auction at Sotheby’s in 20 years? I think he may have something to say about it. So, in my opinion, the handling of the dismantling is exactly the right thing to do. The gallery is cataloguing every contribution and you can see the satisfied look on the artists’ faces as they cast their abandoned pieces of work into the big Art Bin.
Personally I loved it. It was an impressive installation with famous artists such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Peter Blake and of course Michael Landy all contributing. It provoked thoughts and conversations for most of the day between my friend and I, and surely that is what art is about – the pure enjoyment of it. To make you think and wonder and push your brain a little further than it would normally on any given day, just because you can.
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