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Video: Open lecture by one of the legendary YBA artist Michael Landy held within the framework of RIBOCA1

Arterritory.com

19/07/2018 

Video: Linda Veinberga

Throughout his practice, Michael Landy has created epic installations and performances to explore political and social issues. Break Down, his 2001 monumental commission for Artangel, was a systematic destruction of his 7,227 possessions staged in a former department store in London. In 2004, he installed Semi-detached at Tate Britain, a full-scale model of the front and back facades of his parents’ house. Landy is also known for his meticulously detailed drawings, including a vast series of 80 intimate portraits of his family and friends, as well as carefully rendered botanical drawings of weeds. Landy studied at Goldsmiths and while there he exhibited in the now-legendary Freeze exhibition organized by Damien Hirst in 1988, the show that launched the Young British Artists group. Landy was elected as a Royal Academician in May 2008 and his works are held in many public institutions including the Tate Collection, London; the Arts Council Collection, UK; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 

As for the Riga Biennial – Michael Landy has created work “Open for Business” – a functioning kiosk in the inner yard of the former Faculty of Biology. His work offers an ironic critique of the Brexit predicament his home country, Great Britain, has recently maneuvered itself into.

In his open lecture in Riga, one of the legendary Young British Artists, the master of irony and wit Michael Landy addresed also his earlier projects and spoke about the evolution of his work.