Michael Landry

Earlier this year I overheard and watched the beginning of a documentary film looking at the best known work of the young British artist Michael Landry. The film covered his 2001 "installation" Break-down. The film which I later borrowed in full from my lecturer Anika covered much of Landry's career as an artist up until that point, his work mostly covered issues of consumerism. "Closing down Sale" was exhibited at his gallery with artwork displayed in trolleys and bargain bins and with posters and a tannoy encouraging customers to buy artwork at bargain prices, the piece was apparently intended to comment on the commodification of art. His most recognised piece before Breakdown was Scrapheap services, which produced little saleable work. I believe it existed in the form of a installation I and a series of videos showing thousands of little paper people being rounded up and disposed of. I guess it showed certain elements of society as a disposable commodity or something. Not all that interesting to me and my project, but another comment on ways in which things can have value or be disposable.

The video did cover this early work and featured interviews with Landry Discussing the processes of creating them and his motivation for the work, the majority of the film featured his most famous work "Break-Down", it covered the buildup to the project, footage of the installation and interviews afterwards of Landry showing how it had affected him and some elements of him slowly re-accumulating some of life's essentials.

The work itself consisted of Landry packing up and cataloguing every single possession that he had or owned such as his car, bank cards, house keys, birth certificate, old love letters from ex's, his fathers old coat that had been given to him that took his mother a whole year to pay for. These are just a few examples of possessions that he sacrificed for the project. In total he catalogued 7227 items that he owned. The next step in the project was to systematically destroy all of them.

The method for this was to rent a space from a department store and set up a small conveyor belt based workshop that operated to look like but serve the opposite function of a production line. All of these possessions were deconstructed into there component parts before being passed through an industrial shredder.

Here is a small segment of the film:

I found this video incredibly empowering when I watched it (it has been over 10 weeks now, this is a very late post) as I myself was staggered by the amount of things that I own and am attached to. It reminded me of two events in my life where I was shocked by the accumulated mass of my belongings. The first was when I returned from a trip to New Zealand. I arrived at a house I was renting and staying in with friends. Upon entering my room I was greeted by a huge pile of boxes in the middle of the room, I asked my friend Leon "Who else is storing stuff in this room?" his response was "Know one, this is all yours". Well I was shocked, it had been a whole summer since I had seen any of this stuff and I remember barely being able to wait to get back to some of it but I was shocked by just how much stuff I actually owned. I recall sorting through the boxes and finding things that I forgot I had. I thought later that surely if I forgot I owned it then surely I didn't need it?

The second time this happened was nearly a year ago now, I moved out of a house I was renting with someone and returned to Wolverhampton. We filled a whole pick up truck and a large trailer with all of my belongings. Whilst driving back home I turned around and saw through the rear window, all these things that I was taking with me. I imagined the weight of it, the effort the car was having to make dragging it and the impact on the environment that this had. The instant I looked over my shoulder I thought that it looked like I was carrying it all on my back and was reminded of a character from the film "The Labyrinth". A little old lady that lives in a junk yard collecting random items and adding them to the pile on her back, keeping hold of these "Valuable" things until they form a giant mound of rubbish on her back that forms her body but dwarfs what =must be her actual body. It makes for quite a miserable, monstrous form.

The subtext is that the protagonist is weighed down by all this "Junk" that she clings onto for one reason or another and that she doesn't really need any of it and that by escaping it she can identify and engage with what is really important in her life.

I was reminded of this by Landry's art work but also by his reaction to some more specific pieces of that he destroyed as a part of the work. He stated that he didn't mind seeing a lot of things go, but every now and then he would see something and hope that someone in the crowd would snatch it and run away with it so that it could be saved. I believe this reffed to his dads old coat, old drawings, pieces of art given to him by friends and in particular old love letters. He described the process of finding them when he was cataloguing his items for the project. He said the letters and some other personal objects he destroyed, he come across whilst cataloguing his goods having forgotten that he had them. He described what was a touching moment finding this little treasure from his past and being re-connected to a time in his life. I find it amazing that he was able to destroy these things. Yet it is still an important process as if they are really important to him he will remember them and if not then perhaps they weren't that important.

I will cover this again in a later post but I find these Items, the ones which we have a particular emotional attachment too of great interest.

After destroying all of his belongings we were shown Landry living with friends slowly rebuilding the essential elements of his life. One of the first things he did was apply for a new copy of his birth certificate as he would need this to apply for many other things. The second was to replace his Bank card so he could regain access to any money that he still had. Clothes were then donated to him by his friends and family as well as money to replace anything of importance. In a way I guess many of these things are essential in our society but there is a little bit of me that was disappointed that he reverted back to the same old routine, although I guess the impact of this complete 'refresh' would take longer to show on his life. I still imagine he was empowered in many ways by this complete material detachment, although he did seem a little vulnerable afterwards.

Anyways, a few weeks into the first term of this year I visited Wolverhampton and spoke with my friend Odera, I discussed this work with him and his response was to tell me about an installation he had heard about that he thought was at the Tate over the summer (might have been my mistake, cant remember) where there was a hole in the ground that artists were encouraged to throw there work into from a great height, damaging there work. This work would later be collected and destroyed. It took me a while to find it as it was at the South London Gallery but as it turns out it was called Art Bin and was in fact another project by Michael Landry. The premise being that artists donate/ sacrifice there work. I think that this is interesting in two ways, 1st destroying something that you have an attachment too and have spent many hours of hard work on and second to prevent yourself being to precious as an artist by willing do destroy it and move on.