Newsnight Review discussed Michael Landy's exhibition, Nourishment, at the Interim Gallery in East London.

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

KERMODE:
It is definitely one of the cases in which knowledge of the previous work affects the work itself. If you walked in and you knew nothing about Landy you just saw them, the first thing you'd be struck by is how incredibly detailed they are. The thing you don't get seeing that on the screen is, in order to look at some of them you really have to� Because they're tiny, tiny really phenomenally detailed work. That's on a technical level.

The emotional power however comes from the fact that this is the silence that comes after the incredibly public roar of Break Down, and also Scrapheap Services. I mean I saw Break Down. The thing I remember about it was that it was noisy, it was big, it was busty. There was a whole bunch of stuff going on. The only equivalent I can think of, it's like somebody going out and recording a punk rock album and then not doing anything for two years and then presenting an album of chamber music. And it affects the chamber music because of what happened before. It's like that great big brash, I mean in some ways dumb, I mean Scrapheap Services is a little too poppy for it's own good anyway. All that nonsense in a way, then enables this silence to occur in which these beautiful, beautiful tiny little drawings have a special meaning.

It's also affected by the fact that the gallery is completely white. The drawings are mounted on great big white surfaces in which they often occupy a tiny space in the middle. And it is you know, this lovely air of the silence after the storm. I thought it was enchanting because of what had gone before.

GERMAINE GREER:
He's working in as small a compass as he possibly can. And at the same time he's making a rather complicated point - because they're all for sale, they are very expensive. The print runs are 6 or 8 or whatever. He's going to make money for the gallery. They're selling quite nicely. He's genuflecting to the great God Mammon, because he couldn't have done Break Down without an awful lot of money. He's well aware of the contradictions of his own situation.

WARK:
You don't begrudge him the chance to make some money?

GREER:
No. Listen, everyone else is going to get it off him! I don't think he'll get to keep a lot of it. But the thing is that he knew perfectly well that he was putting himself through a discipline. And a very old discipline. It's the oldest kind of plant portrait that he was doing.

NATASHA WALTER:
You have to know something about this process, you have to know the narrative to get much out of these works. It's interesting because in a way he's saying this isn't conceptual art, this is as simple as it gets. But it is so conceptual. The effect of it all rides on the concepts behind it. I do find that a bit, problematic I guess, in a way. In the context of his life it's quite engaging. I'm torn when I look at them. I find the narrative engaging, more on a personal level. I think the political point of Break Down was often sort of pushed. But that is contradictory, I don't think that holds up. Because he couldn't free himself from that consumerist thing. He had to go straight back in there. But as a personal journey I think it is rather touching.

That idea that he had this fear of how people and precious things are put on the scrap heap, and he commented on that by putting everything on the scrap heap. And now he's going out to the scrap heap, you know, to the 'rubbishy' little weeds and pulling them out and making something beautiful and precious again, there's a lovely kind of turnaround, it's quite moving.

GREER:
The temptation is to take them as drawings. When in fact it's another installation. The situation is what you're being asked to respond to. He knows perfectly well that anyone who bothers to go there to see it will know that he's the man who has sold all he had, and was left naked in the world. Now he's become the God of little things. Now he's doing these little weeds. I think it's witty and charming and complicated but I'm not going to buy one of the etchings. And I frankly don't think they're that good I have to say.