I’m all for the celebration of failure, but celebrating waste is another matter.
Last year I started on an ambitious triptych, a painting made from a smooth, angled shards of wood, depicting a misty, ambiguous landscape, made from photographs of the lovely Peckham Rye common. I made the first piece, primed it, and experimented with some colours on it, then promptly abandoned the whole plan and started on something else.
Since then it has sat quietly in my studio, a non-entity, a third of a painting, never to be completed. So when I heard that Michael Landy was constructing an ‘art bin’ in the South London Gallery, right next door to my college studio, I knew my little failed painting had found its final calling.
Landy’s enormous glassy, classy skip fills the single roomed (though soon to be greatly expanded) SLG totally, acting as a very pleasing sculpture in itself. Steel frame and plexiglass windows rise from the ground in satisfying diagonals, and a grand staircase at the far end of the bin ends at the rim; it is from here that my painting is to be flung.
By the time I get to the gallery, the bin is already loaded with a mixture of stretchers, drawings in smashed frames, sculptures, casts and frabrics. Looking in I can pick out some things that are immediately recognisable. I catch the glinting print of a large crystal skull and littered on top are some scratchy prints, depicting crudely etched genitals and cryptic, lovelorn messages. Hirst and Emin are joined by, among others, Gary Hume, Landy himself and Julian Opie, who seems to have thrown out about half his studio.
Landy spends most of the time sat in the corner of the gallery, he alone has the power to judge what is allowed to be cast into the bin. I lean my painting against the wall, and ask if I can just throw it in. Landy takes a look at it and asks me to explain why it is a failure. I talk about its aborted brothers and he agrees that it I have indeed failed. It’s a strange experience and I can feel myself going red as I show him my work. I mean, I’m showing an artist I admire a shit painting I made, and he’s in accord that it is shit. Anyway, as we are both in agreement, in it goes. I climb up the stairs and from the top, the bin looks far emptier, a large pile directly below the drop off point, with the detritus petering out towards the other end. I pause and enjoy this view, and then throw mine in, where it makes a satisfying loud bang, and slides underneath one of Landy’s own framed drawings.
I don’t feel that great about it really. In fact I’m glad that my piece of crap is now partly obscured by Landy’s work, which is considerably less crap than mine. I’d imagined though that our experiences of tossing our work in would be very different. This is where Landy’s art bin gets problematic for me. While I was throwing a genuine piece of tut into the bin, Landy and the other famous, successful artists were throwing money away. There’s potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds wrapped up in Hirst, Emin and Opie’s rejected work. In this way, the bin to some extent proves artistic integrity, while also insulting younger, more struggling artists. There’s an arrogance to Hirst et al (obviously) casually throwing thousands of pounds into the bin, and for what real reason? To make themselves feel better? Maybe I’m missing the point, but imagine if all the money currently lying in the bin was given to charity instead. 100 yards from the gallery entrance lies Peckham town centre, not only one of the poorest and most dilapidated areas of London, but one filled with these aforementioned young, struggling artists. Imagine if these failed art works were put to good use, raising money for youth art projects in the area, or failing that, raising money for Oxfam, or a children’s home, anything. As someone with art world aspirations myself, and with the full knowledge that the likelihood of me throwing away prints worth thousands of pounds in the future is slim, I feel this is all a little insensitive.
Also, the age of the bloated London art market is most definitely over. The art world has been crippled by the recession just as everyone else has, and so Landy’s comment on the true worth of art is somewhat diluted. There’s people being made redundant every day in the UK, millions unemployed, and Hirst, Emin and Landy are publicly throwing away tens of thousands of pounds? They can fuck off. I’m not saying that these artists have an obligation to sell their work and give the money away, but such frivolous and public celebration of waste makes me sick. There’s a reason it’s frowned upon to go through people’s rubbish. What people throw away can be private, embarrassing and fantastically wasteful. Landy claims that in the bin, all the artists are equal, but for me and my fellow poor students graduating this year, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Landy’s work just doesn’t seem relevant in this current artistic, and environmental climate. Just like his worldly possessions after his 2001 piece Break Down, all the art in the bin will end up in a landfill, with a few unbroken frames and stretchers being donated to Camberwell College of Art (thanks). Aren’t landfills full enough without artists purposefully adding to them? Granted much of this failed work may have ended up there eventually anyway, but surely there’s a more appropriate way of disposing of this stuff. Most of the work being either wood, paper or canvas anyway, I propose an enormous elaborate bonfire in Burgess Park, with Landy supplying free sparklers.
As I leave the gallery, I watch another Camberwell student, Samuel Craven, throw hundreds of pieces of A4 paper into the bin. Printed on each piece is photocopied fifty pound note. I don’t know the original intention of Sam’s work in this case, but it seems a fitting piece for the bin, showing what’s really in there, the money that could be used for something truly worthy.
I now regret throwing my painting in to Landy’s bin. What I throw away is my business, just as what Damien Hirst throws away is his. I’m in favor of admitting and (to an extent) celebrating failure, it’s a part of how all artists work. But really, I think we should all dispose of our waste in private.
By Tom Harrad
