Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Sherman Galleries, Sydney (stamped verso)
The Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED
Man in Oxford Street is Auto-destructive, Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 19 July - 12 August 2007, cat. 6

Michael Landy's Breakdown (2001), shown at Sherman Galleries in
July 2007, was an unmitigated triumph.
The act of pulverising all one's worldly possessions – including
one's car, one's passport and the contents of one's bank account
– paradoxically resonates at both positive and negative levels.
Destruction can serve as a metaphor for purification and the human
thirst for tabula rasa has been well documented in literature as well
as in research relating to the human psyche. On the other hand,,
capitalist societies put high value on material possessions. One could
well ask: why waste what has been diligently accumulated? Why
destroy when one can build and prosper?
H.2.N.Y. Teenglee (2007) relates to another quite separate act of
destruction.
Jean Tinguely's Homage to New York (1960), a deliberately selfdestructing kinetic sculpture created for New York's MOMA – was
reprised by Michael Landy in a series of works on paper, of which the
suite offered for auction is an excellent example.
The show, which came to the Gallery via the good offices of John
Kaldor, (an ongoing fan of Landy's work), was a major hit. People
crowded into the Gallery space, mesmerised by images of the
conveyor belt crushing the life and worth out of the full gamut of the
artist's possessions and eventually, at the end of the line, spitting out
parcels of shredded, useless content.
In this apparently simple two-dimensional work on paper, abstracted
wheels spin, turn and churn, capturing so much more than might
at first glance be apparent. The machine age has been with us for
a century and, with robots already at our fingertips, we might well
ask the questions: How are we to go forward? Where is value to be
found?
Dr Gene Sherman