Michael Landy's first experience working with Artangel was on the construction of Rachel Whiteread's House in 1993. He was then selected as part of the 1999 Open call for proposals and created Break Down in 2001.
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 explored contemporary consumerism in a sequence of major projects stretching from Market and Closing Down Sale early in that decade, to the sprawling shredded landscape of Scrapheap Services.
In the year following Break Down, Landy worked on a series of painstakingly detailed etchings of weeds, rendered in the traditional style of botanical draughtsmanship. In 2004, he created Semi-detached, a full scale model of the front and back facades of his parents’ house, shown at Tate Britain. In more recent times he has created drawings in charcoal, oilstick, glue and ink that reference Homage to New York, Jean Tinguely’s self-destructing machine which, for 27 minutes in 1960, spasmed, shook, and burst into flames but failed to fully self-destruct.