Michael LandyScrapheap Services 1995

Scrapheap Services is a room-sized installation presenting a fictional people-cleansing company. Landy spent two years raiding tin banks and fast food outlets' refuse sacks for materials such as aluminium cans, food wrappers and cigarette packs from which he cut out the template of a simplified, generic human figure. Thousands of these are scattered over the floor and fill litter bins and a customised street sweeper's cart. Mannequins dressed in a red uniform sweep them up like leaves for disposal in the 'Vulture' machine, an adapted wood shredder, which bears (like the bins, the uniforms and the cart) the company logo and the words 'We leave the scum with no place to hide'… (read more)