''Break Down'' was an artwork created by
Young British Artist Michael Landy
Michael Landy (born 1963) is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation '' Break Down'' (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the ''Art Bin'' project (2010) at the ...
in London in February 2001, as a reaction to the
consumerist
''Consumerist'' (also known as ''The Consumerist'') was a non-profit consumer affairs website owned by Consumer Media LLC, a subsidiary of '' Consumer Reports'', with content created by a team of full-time reporters and editors. The site's foc ...
society.
The work was commissioned jointly by ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' newspaper and
Artangel
Artangel is a London-based arts organisation founded in 1985 by Roger Took. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, r ...
, as part of the Artangel Open bidding process. It was selected from 700 bids by a panel that included
Brian Eno,
Rachel Whiteread
Dame Rachel Whiteread (born 20 April 1963) is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993.
Whiteread was one of the Young British Ar ...
,
Richard Cork
Richard Cork (born 25 March 1947) is a British art historian, editor, critic, broadcaster and exhibition curator. He has been an art critic for the ''Evening Standard'', '' The Listener'', ''The Times'' and the ''New Statesman''. Cork was also ...
,
James Lingwood and
Michael Morris. Another work was a recreation of the
Battle of Orgreave
The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant a ...
by
Jeremy Deller
Jeremy Deller (born 30 March 1966) is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the devaluation of artistic ego through th ...
.
In February 2001, Landy gathered all his possessions at a former
C&A branch at 499
Oxford Street
Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and ...
near
Marble Arch
The Marble Arch is a 19th-century white marble-faced triumphal arch in London, England. The structure was designed by John Nash in 1827 to be the state entrance to the cour d'honneur of Buckingham Palace; it stood near the site of what is toda ...
(now a branch of
Primark
Primark Stores Limited (; trading as Penneys in the Republic of Ireland) is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It has stores across Europe and in the United States. The Penneys brand is not us ...
). Over the previous three years he had catalogued all 7,227 of his possessions, from postage stamps, his passport and birth certificate, to food, clothes (including his father's 1970s sheepskin coat), works of art (including works by
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin, CBE, RA (; born 3 July 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and ...
and
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst (; né
Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingd ...
), and his
Saab 900 Turbo 16 S. The work was arranged into ten categories - artworks, clothing, equipment, furniture, kitchen, leisure, motor vehicle, perishables, reading material and studio material. They were then all destroyed in a two-week period, opened as a public exhibition. The process of destruction was like the reverse of an industrial
assembly line
An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a ''progressive assembly'') in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in se ...
, with items circulating in yellow trays on long figure-of-eight conveyor belt. Ten workers systematically removed each item from the convey belt and reduced it to its basic materials by smashing, shredding and pulverising them. The work attracted around 45,000 visitors.
The resulting bags of granulated rubbish weighed nearly 6 tonnes, and were recycled or sent to landfill. None was exhibited or sold. Landy's full inventory was published as a 300-page volume, ''Break Down Inventory'' in 2002.
Following the exhibition, Landy was left with no possessions. He did not return to art for a year. In a new project in 2010, ''
Art Bin'', Landy invited members of the public to throw away works of art they disliked into a large plastic bin at the
South London Gallery
The South London Gallery, founded 1891, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London. Until 1992, it was known as the South London Art Gallery, and nowadays the acronym SLG is often used. Margot Heller became its direc ...
.
References
''Break Down'' Artangel
Michael Landy: ''Break Down'' Artangel
How we made ''Break Down'', James Lingwood, May 2002 Artangel
Michael Landy's Inventory Artangel (abridged)
Michael Landy − ''Break Down'' Gallery of Lost Art
''The Independent'', 10 January 2010
Man 'destroys' life for art BBC News, 9 February 2001
How we made: Michael Landy and James Lingwood on ''Break Down'' ''The Guardian'', 7 May 2012
{{Young British Artists, state=collapsed
2001 works
2001 in London
Contemporary works of art