Royal Academician Michael Landy’s works range dramatically in scale and medium, from large site-specific mixed-media installations, to delicate drawings on paper. His ongoing fascination with ideas around value and ownership are a core thread within his practice. In the seminal work Break Down (2001), every one of the artist’s 7,227 possessions were destroyed by Landy and his assistants over the course of two weeks in a former department store building in London.

In recent years, works on paper have become more central to his output. Meticulously rendered botanical drawings and portraits of friends explore intimacy, the passing of time, and communication. His practice has continued to develop through archival projects and an exploration of his personal history; his father’s life was the subject of a recent video work shown at Tate Britain. This delicate watercolour titled Family Ruin 34 continues Landy’s investigation into the past albeit through an imaginary lens; it is one of a series of new paintings on paper of a fictional ancestral home, made during the global lockdown period. Drawn from photographs found online of abandoned crofts in rural Ireland, these works evoke another time and place beyond the limitations of confinement.

Landy’s work has been exhibited internationally in venues including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2015), Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City (2014); National Gallery, London (2013); Tate Liverpool (2009); and Tate Britain, London (2004). He has made numerous major public projects and his works are held in public institutions internationally, including the Arts Council, England; MOMA New York; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. He was elected a Royal Academician in 2008. Landy lives and works in London.