A British artist best known for destroying all of his personal belongings for a performance piece is creating a “wall of protest” at the Power Plant this fall.
Michael Landy has put an open call to the public asking for contributions to Demonstration, a wall of words, texts, symbols and slogans that will “capture Canada’s social and political landscape,” the gallery said in a statement.
With help from assistants, Landy will take the public submissions and translate them into red-and-white drawings of protest that will be pinned to the wall as part of the continually evolving installation.
The exhibition will take over The Power Plant’s Fleck Clerestory from September 29 to May 13, 2018. Submissions received by September 10 will be considered for the opening reception on September 28, but material will be accepted throughout the run.
The Power Plant and Landy are looking for submissions that “makes you happy or sad, what you feel strongly about, want to react against, protest, or support and champion issues that capture Canada’s social and political reality, and affect our contemporary landscape in 2017.”
“The work is based on this idea of creating a communal and collaborative portrait of Canada,” says curator Nabila Abdel Nabi, adding that Demonstration is part of the gallery’s Canada 150-themed programming. “Part of what we want the exhibition to do is not only show what the urgent issues are, but how we feel about them and how we project that in the future.”
Active since the 1990s, Landy explores capitalism, consumption, cultural value and materialism often through sprawling wall installations. In 2001, he and 12 assistants systematically destroyed everything he owned – 7,227 items in all, including clothing, artwork and his car – for Break Down, a performance piece now considered a seminal British artwork.
Last summer, Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland staged a mid-career retrospective of his work called Michael Landy: Out Of Order.
Landy will spend two weeks in Toronto creating and installing the exhibition, which coincides with the Power Plant’s 30th anniversary as well as the Creative Time Summit, a three-day event organized in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Get full details on how to contribute to Demonstration via the Power Plant’s website. Submit work via submissions@thepowerplant.org or by using the hashtag #TPPDemonstration on Instagram and Twitter.
Check out a video of Break Down below:
kevinr@nowtoronto.com | @kevinritchie
