Martin Creed

Martin Creed (born 1968) is an artist and musician. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: the lights going on and off, which was an empty room in which the lights went on and off.

Life and work

Martin Creed was born in Wakefield, England, and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied art at the Slade School of Art at University College London from 1986 to 1990.

Since 1987, Creed has numbered each of his works, and most of his titles relate in a very direct way to the work's nature. Work No. 79: some Blu-tack kneaded, rolled into a ball and depressed against a wall (1993), for example, is just what it sounds like, as is Work No. 88, a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball (1994). One of Creed's best known works is Work No. 200, half the air in a given space (1998), which is a room with enough inflated balloons in it for them to contain half the air in it.

In 1996, Richard Long and Roger Ackling selected Creed to exhibit at EASTinternational.

Creed's Work No 850, an athlete running through the Tate Britain gallery.

Creed is perhaps best known for his submission for the 2001 Turner Prize show at the Tate Gallery, Work No. 227, the lights going on and off, which won that year's prize. The artwork presented was an empty room in which the lights periodically switched on and off (frequency five seconds on/five seconds off). As so often with the Turner Prize, this created a great deal of press attention, most of it questioning whether something as minimalist as this could be considered art at all. Artist Jacqueline Crofton threw eggs at the walls of Creed's empty room as a protest against the prize, declaring that Creed's presentations were not real art and that "painting is in danger of becoming an extinct skill in this country".^[1] In 2006, Martin Creed presented an extensive exhibition with sculptures, videos and performances titled I Like Things with Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan.

Creed formed a band, Owada, in 1994. In 1997, they released their first CD, Nothing, on David Cunningham's Piano label. Here too there is a very direct relation between the song titles and the work itself: in songs like "1-2-3-4" the entire lyrics are contained in the title. Sound has also featured in his gallery-based work, with pieces using doorbells and metronomes. Since 1999, he no longer uses the band name "Owada. In 2000, he published a recording of his songs under his own name with the arts publisher Art Metropole, in Toronto. In 2010, he provided the cover art for a Futuristic Retro Champions single, while supporting its launch with an appearance with his own band.

In 2009, he wrote and choreographed Work No. 1020, a live performance of Creed's own music, ballet, words and film, originally produced by Sadler's Wells, London and performed in the Lilian Baylis Studio. In 2010, Work No. 1020 was performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh as part of the Fringe Festival and was most recently performed on 21st June 2011 in the main theatre at Sadler's Wells, London.

Some of Creed's works use neon signs. In these cases, the title of the work usually indicates what the sign says. These pieces include Work No. 220, Don't Worry (2000) and Work No. 232, the whole world + the work = the whole world (2000), which was mounted on Tate Britain in London.

In 2011, Creed gave work to the UK Registered Charity the Environmental Justice Foundation (1088128). A run of 20 t-shirts was made featuring his Work No. 531, all of which were hand screen printed in London and individually numbered on the inside neck. They are available from the charity.^[2]

In January 2011, Creed released the single "Thinking/Not Thinking" (TR1) on his label Telephone Records.

On art

"I don't know what art is"

"I wouldn't call myself an artist"

In an interview published in the book Art Now: Interviews with Modern Artists (2002), Creed explains that he used to 'make paintings' but never liked having to decide what to paint. He decided to stop making paintings and instead to think about what it meant, and why he wanted to make things. He says:

“

The only thing I feel like I know is that I want to make things. Other than that, I feel like I don’t know. So the problem is in trying to make something without knowing what I want. [...] I think it’s all to do with wanting to communicate. I mean, I think I want to make things because I want to communicate with people, because I want to be loved, because I want to express myself.

”

Creed says that he makes art works not as part of an academic exploration of 'conceptual' art, but rather from a wish to connect with people, 'wanting to communicate and wanting to say hello'. The work is therefore primarily emotional:

“

To me it’s emotional. Aye. To me that’s the starting point. I mean, I do it because I want to make something. I think that’s a desire, you know, or a need. I think that I recognise that I want to make something, and so I try to make something. But then you get to thinking about it and that’s where the problems start because you can’t help thinking about it, wondering whether it’s good or bad. But to me it’s emotional more than anything else.

”

Creed's work is often a small intervention in the world, making use of existing materials or situations rather than bringing new material into the world.

Notes and references

1. ^ Youngs, Ian (2002)"The art of Turner protests", BBC www.bbc.co.uk, 31 October 2002. Accessed 8 January 2007
2. ^ Martin Creed for EJF

External links

• Martin Creed – Martin Creed's own website, with some artworks, texts and news
• Martin Creed at Johnen + Schöttle
• Artkrush.com interview with Martin Creed (April 2006)
• Martin Creed performance video from Tate Britain's website
• Martin Creed at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
• Make me Reality Printed Words based on Work No.394 by Martin Creed
• Martin Creed at Tate St Ives Martin Creed's contribution to the summer show at Tate St Ives from the TateShots blog

Persondata
Name	Creed, Martin
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Date of birth	1968
Place of birth	WAKEFIELD
Date of death
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