Scrapheap challenge: Michael Landy's art bin

For the next six weeks, Michael Landy will fill his giant 'art bin', 600 metres cubed, at the South London Gallery, with his own creative disasters and those of other artists
Photograph: Martin Godwin

A painting gets the heave-ho. Landy famously pulverised posessions including his car and his birth certificate in a work called Break Down (2001), which became an installation in a former C&A department store on London's Oxford Street
Photograph: Martin Godwin

Mind your head ... Landy watches as a skull print by Damien Hirst joins the pile. The installation also builds on his work Scrapheap Services, 1995, a room-sized installation presenting a fictional people-cleansing company
Photograph: Martin Godwin

'Art Bin is about failure,' Landy says, 'either within particular art work, or more generally in artists' practice.' It also makes reference to the power of galleries in making or breaking artists' careers, as well as to the vagaries of the art market. In the foreground is a gold bouncing ball by Fran Cottell; in the background you can just glimpse a couple of Scottish flags by Tracey Emin
Photograph: Martin Godwin

Throwaway culture ... Michael Landy assesses the damage, with a Mark Titchner aluminium print in the foreground. He says, 'Nobody discards art which has some sort of intrinsic value, so the bin becomes a monument to creative failure.' You can find out how to apply for your work to be destroyed – not everything will be accepted – at a dedicated website, art-bin.co.uk
Photograph: Martin Godwin