IAN BREAKWELL. 1971.

London: Angela Flowers, 1971
21 x 20.8cm, 4pp. Exhibition catalogue with two images of works by the conceptual artist – this exhibition was the important show where Breakwell’s and Mike Leggett’s ‘One’ film was made. The film “documents a performance by Breakwell at the Angela Flowers Gallery on 10th February 1971, celebrating the gallery’s first anniversary. The performance was filmed with Leggett on 16mm film and digitally reconstructed by him in 2003. The event coincided with the Apollo 14, third manned mission to the moon. Throughout an eight-hour ‘working day’, a group of labourers shovel dirt in a room on the second floor of the gallery. Each labourer stands before his own pile of dirt and work begins, shovelling from one pile to the next in a continuous circle. The activity was simultaneously broadcast via CCTV to a monitor in the gallery’s street level window. As the day went on and the original piles merged into a layer of mud on the gallery floor, the live footage struck a striking resemblance to that being fed back from the moon, drawing the attention, and confusion, of several passers by. Over the footage, is a soundtrack spoken by Breakwell, in which he takes each part in a conversation about different kinds of employment, drawing a parallel between the quotidian, and futile labour in the gallery and the seemingly more glamorous and extraordinary labour on the moon. At the end of the day’s activity, the workers stop to rest, exhausted, and celebrate the birthday with cake and a song.” (Lengthy quote taken from the FTI-Io website). A scarce documentation in VG condition.