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From: Vestyn Plants Category: Art Date: 29 January 2010 Time: 07:27 AM Review: That is the more salient element about Landy's Bin, the question of "Values", in many ways The Culture Show reflected a bit of the gladiatorial feeling of the live event at SLG, the crowd packed behind the glass walls that dominate the gallery for this show. Those references to art fairs and so forth really resonate when you see a Damien Hirst skull painting; albeit a rather atrocious version of the celebrated object - flying through the air and crashing down amongst various failed bits and pieces, the Gary Hume piece featured on the CS suddenly seemed frail, flimsy and far less viable than the versions (?) that appeared put galleries, there was a genuine feeling of creative hiatus as all of this "stuff" went into the bin, it reflected the whole spectrum of current questions about our security and our reliance upon the capitalist 's and the politicians even as they are being questioned about Iraq, being grilled about their expenses etc. There were recognizable artists at SLG who may have signed up to the idea of increasing their public exposure but I'm doubtful that many of them listed needed to ally themselves to the Art Bin project to do just that. Perhaps this question's the role of the artist as well as the value of the art, for two decades now , artists have been busting themselves to be celebrities and many seem to achieved celibracy without creating any artfulness, an apparently endless pantomime of gimmickry and sensationalism has been blended as "actions" or live art, the notion of creating objects without touching them reflected industrialized society's predilection for outsourcing to offshore, under-paid labour - we do not need to now how much Hirst paid his assistants or if they were in the U.K. but this concept contrasts with the urge to make things with one's own hand for the love of doing it, the Craftsmanship. Maybe that artwork crashing into the Landy Bin is doing more than eg "promoting other artists" or making a statement about our collective value system. It must also work on a personal level for the artists who decide the work is'nt working or that trashing it takes it further than it was ever destined in the first place. A curious sight was to see Michael Landy at the opening in SLG suddenly grabbing one of his pencil drawings back from the abyss and I wondered about the morality of his actions but in the end the Art Bin is a Micheal Landy exhibition and as an action it is very interesting....