Michael Landy
British artist (born 1963)
Michael Landy (born 1963) is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation Break Down (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the Art Bin project (2010) at the South London Gallery. On 29 May 2008, Landy was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Early life and works
Landy was born in London, in May 1963. He first studied art in Loughton and Loughborough, then at Goldsmiths College in London, having been inspired to take up art professionally after having a picture selected for display on the BBC television art program Take Hart.
After graduating from Goldsmiths in 1988, he exhibited in the Freeze exhibition, organised by Damien Hirst—an exhibition which first brought together a group of artists that would later become known as the Young British Artists.
In 1990, Landy exhibited in East Country Yard with several of the artists from Freeze. His first solo exhibition was Market (1990), an installation comprising numerous empty market stalls. Like much of his later work it was intended as a comment on consumerism and society.
In 1992, Landy started an association with Karsten Schubert by making Closing Down Sale for his gallery, an installation made up of a number of objects in shopping trolleys labelled "BARGAIN" and recorded announcements encouraging visitors to buy.
The public source identifies “Michael Landy” as british artist (born 1963). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Michael, Landy and British.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3308314. VIAF identifies the subject as 96063343. The Library of Congress control number is n94117269. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2001, 2010 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Landy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.