MICHAEL LANDY
Break Down

10 – 24 February 2001
former C&A store at Marble Arch, 499 – 523 Oxford Street, London W1

Michael Landy made an inventory of his life, every single thing he owns. Every piece of furniture, every record, every article of clothing, every book, every gadget, every work of art. Over 5000 individual items were catalogued for Break Down in Landy's existential audit of his stuff.

Break Down was presented in the C&A store on Oxford Street near Marble Arch. In this shoppers' paradise, Landy's consumer nightmare was displayed in 14 days of systematic de-construction. In an earlier work, Landy plastered 'Everything Must Go' over the gallery walls. In Break Down, Everything Did Go.

Michael Landy
Known as one of the most thought-provoking artists of the ‘Sensation Generation’, Landy's work was first shown in the legendary 'Freeze' exhibition of 1988. Through the 1990s, Landy's work has explored contemporary consumerism in a sequence of major projects stretching from 'Market' and 'Closing Down Sale' in the early 1990s, to the sprawling shredded landscape of 'Scrapheap Services' - most recently exhibited at Tate Britain.

Over three years in the making, Break Down proved to be Michael Landy's most ambitious - and most extreme - project to date.

The Times
The Times/Artangel Open was conceived to give artists a unique opportunity to realise unusually ambitious projects. Break Down was selected by a panel including artists Brian Eno and Rachel Whiteread, The Times' art critic Richard Cork and Artangel Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris.

The Times' support for the visual arts within the United Kingdom is unstinting and, over recent years, the paper has given increased coverage to the renaissance of contemporary art in all its forms.