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Review Feb 17 2010 « | »
Art Bin at the South London Gallery Zoe Troughton and Katy Wan review Michael Landy's latest project

Zoe Troughton

In a gallery one expects to see art hanging silently on vast white walls; not hanging, for a second, in mid-air before the sound of its destruction echoes thunderously through the space. Conversations continue, but I am fixedly awaiting the crash of Giles Corby's cumbersome wooden sculpture Underworld, as it is being hauled over the edge of the colossal 600-cubic-metre galvanised steel and polycarbonate skip; given to gravity.

This is Michael Landy's Art Bin at the South London Gallery in Peckham.

In the moments before Corby's piece reaches its splintered fate I hear feverish snippets of remarks such as, 'I want to see it go crash, into the underworld', and, 'the heavy ones are the good ones'. And as the piece strikes the bottom of the bin a yell of uncontrollable, boyish elation erupts from another thrill-seeking viewer. There is palpable glee amongst the on-lookers in the destruction carried out at the white-gloved hands of Landy's assistants.

I can't, however, help but question whether we were really are witnessing the disposal of the donated works of art. It strikes me that they are, for the duration of the exhibition, simply at the disposal of Landy. This is redeployment, a recycling of works that have become superfluous to their original creators. The pieces are essentially still being exhibited, but in a novel, sensational, and crowd-pulling way, and I can't help but feel for the poor buggers who have to dispose of the Art Bin.

The transparency of Landy's skip invites us to look at the works in their newly transformed state. The debris is not dissimilar from what you might find in a domestic skip. The works are reduced to their fundamental elements; I see the backs of canvases stretched over lengths of 2x2, nails exposed, cheap, chalky plaster, smashed glass and so on. Creation and destruction may, at first glance, appear to sit awkwardly side by side, however Landy demonstrates, by publicly marrying the two, that perhaps they are not such polar opposites. I would even go so far as to say that the destruction of these works spectacularly revitalises them.

To my surprise, the works in the bin do not look spent and nullified, but gain a physical dimension to their existence: the residue of the energy with which they fell, dramatically enlivens them. So if you are feeling in need of some rejuvenation, perhaps you might consider heading to your local dump to dive, with blissful abandon, into an enormous skip.

Katy Wan

Michael Landy's latest work may be regarded as either dystopic, if you have a particular spiritual or monetary investment in art, or utopian, if you have a disdain for sheer saturation of the world with useless objects. Michael Landy is now giving you the opportunity to take decisive action if you are in the latter camp. In the vast, high-ceilinged space of the South London Gallery, he has erected a giant Plexiglas and metal structure, apparently in the shape of a skip.

In what Landy describes as a monument to creative failure, artists and members of the public are invited to submit artworks for inclusion into this 600m³ construction, although only those pieces accepted by Landy or his representative can be disposed of in the Bin. From the obligatory sheet of exhibition information that was handed to me, I learned that such luminaries as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst have contributed work. Was this an ironic gesture, to accept into this Bin the most financially successful, yet critically dubious, artists of the Nineties?

On the opening night, uniformed 'art handlers' with white gloves and suitably cool expressions on their faces ceremoniously carried painted canvases, plaster sculptures and other bric-a-brac. They then ascended a metal staircase at one end of the Bin, only to hurl these artworks into the vast space below at regular intervals. At this inaugural event, gasps and squeals of joy were simultaneously emitted from the viewers below, as dropping the objects from such a height created a commotion.

However, it is difficult to imagine how such an atmosphere will be maintained over the next couple of months. The sheer volume of the structure served to wedge visitors between the plastic and the walls of the gallery, directing all vision inwards and, if not to the work, to the other observers in the gallery. This goldfish effect contributed another layer to Landy's exploration of self-worth. Perhaps this was heightened on the occasion of the private view, but on the faces of many of those who attended I observed many looks that silently wondered whether there was networking-value in the person that was stood next to them.

Currently, art in the commercial domain is mostly uplifting, fairly insular and inaccessible in an excluding sort of way. Perhaps the reliance upon contemporary practice in this work contributes to its success rather than its failure, but it does make one sympathise with the idea of disposing an art world that is currently made up of a lot of rubbish.

Art Bin is at the South London Gallery until the 14th March

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