Gillian Wearing, Drunk, 1999
Gillian Wearing, Drunk, 1999
- Initial research before reading the text: Gillian Wearing is an English conceptual artist, and was also around in the period of the YBAs. Known for 'documentation of everyday life through video and photography'. http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/gillian-wearing/
- Drunk is Described as painting and theatre. Perhaps due to its format across three screens combined with moving image of individuals.
- Authenticity in the piece is important as it makes an 'elaborate semi-fiction out of fact'.
Michael Landy, Breakdown, 2001
Michael Landy, Breakdown, 2001
Key points on the text: Landy in conversation with James Lingwood about Breakdown:
- Breakdown was a reaction against the materialistic society that Landy knew, where he destroyed everything he owned.
- "I thought about it being an examination of consumerism, about me being one of many millions of consumers and somehow at some point we began to create our own biographies from the things we own or possess. And to realise the power of things and possessions. It was anti-consumerist but it was almost as much to do with people's love of things, and of different value systems."
- This quote from the text explains Landy's connection with value systems and how commodities can have this power over you, which was also a previous interest.
- "Most people were able to separate what they could at a push do without from the possessions that they would be really distraught to lose, so there was this powerful tension between possessions which had economic value and those which had sentimental value."
Reflections
- Landy's work does react against society and consumerism and material value, and general politics at the time, which is still relevant today.
- This approach that he went for - which was destroying everything he owned-forced the viewer to empathise and think about their own possessions what how possessions can control you. I think Landy succeeds in showing the viewer this, and this performative piece was needed to be said at the time.
- He is trying to force the viewer to break away from commodity/ posessions.
Further research:
- Michael Landy, Closing Down Sale, 1992 [online] http://www.thomasdanegallery.com/artists/43-michael-landy/works [accessed 16/03/17].
Michael Landy's 'Closing Down Sale' (1992) works on this theory of de-aestheticization, and critiques consumer culture.
This shares themes with Claes Oldenburg's 'Store' where he created a shop front full of consumer inspired products. (See image on the left).
What interests me most about Landy's works are the level of critique they are engaging with. A clear critique of their cultures and societies at the time - for example Oldenburg was reacting against the emerging postmodern consumer society, Landy exploits these sale references that boomed in the 1990s along with late capitalism.
Reflection:
- In terms of the aesthetic, it is completely opposite to my practice - of which exploits and obsesses over the surface. I feel like these artists critique on a level that is perhaps too past the time we are in now - they have critiqued the consumption culture to the extreme, but what we have now has crossed over into art.
Discourse Discussion:
- Tony Cragg at the YSP
- Further research- go to the YSP
- Nottingham Contemporary Lara
- Olaf Eliasson black horizon Croatia
- Serpentine Galleries- go to
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