Martin Creed: What’s the Point of It? – review

Review by Jamie Mitchell

It’s a dull rainy day in February and I’m visiting London’s Hayward Gallery. Opening a door I am confronted by a sofa that’s partly obstructing the entrance to the main exhibition space. After squeezing around it I look up – and immediately jump back: it seems I’m about to be decapitated by a giant spinning neon sign spelling out the word ‘MOTHERS’. In fact the whirring sign is too high to decapitate even the tallest person in the room, but it gives me a fright all the same. It’s several minutes before I can pluck up the courage to walk underneath it. These strange and disconcerting objects are artworks by the Turner Prize-winning British artist Martin Creed, part of a major retrospective exhibition of work he has produced over the past 27 years.

Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001 with a show that famously included a piece of Blu Tack squashed onto a wall, and a bare room in which the lights went on and off. It’s the kind of highly conceptual art that drives many people to anger, and is often used as an example by people who claim that modern artists lack talent.

I have to admit to being a bit of a Martin Creed sceptic myself. It all seems a little arbitrary, as if sticking anything that vaguely interests you in an art gallery makes it art – provided, of course, that you’re an artist. For Creed, ‘art’ can be absolutely anything: a scrunched up bit of paper, cardboard boxes that used to contain consumer goods or some chairs stacked on top of one another.

Work No. 998, 2009, Martin Creed, What’s the point of it, Hayward Gallery, 2014 Installation view, photo: Linda Nylind

Creed has called this exhibition ‘What’s the Point of It?’, and while you may find yourself asking that very question, you shouldn’t expect to come away with an answer: The artist often seems deliberately vague when talking about what inspires him or what he hopes viewers will take away from his work. Talking to the Guardian in 2010 he said: ‘Art is just things in the world, usually an arrangement of colour and shapes. It’s people who have the feelings and the reactions.’ In other words, art is whatever you make of it.

With such a loose definition, it’s not surprising that the body of work collected here is remarkable in its diversity. Alongside found objects there are painted portraits, video installations, a series of more than a thousand prints made with broccoli and sculptures made of iron. If you didn’t already know it, you might not guess that all this was the work of one artist. It is certainly the produce of a wandering and curious mind.

Work No. 1588, 2013,Martin Creed, What’s the point of it, Hayward Gallery, 2014 Installation view, photo: Linda Nylind

Martin Creed, What’s the point of it, Hayward Gallery, 2014 Installation view, photo: Linda Nylind

In interviews, Creed comes across as affable and irreverent. An often-used photograph of him taken many years ago and exhibited in this show sees a young man grinning from ear to ear, and this sense of fun and good humour is apparent throughout this exhibition.

The awkwardly placed sofa, whose proper title is Work No. 142, A Large Piece of Furniture Partially Obstructing a Door, and the spinning neon sign (Work No. 1092) turn out to be the first of many jokes the artist is having with his audience. From a speaker comes the sound of someone, probably Creed himself, blowing a raspberry; a large screen showing a side-on view of a penis gradually becoming erect and then subsiding has been placed outside so that it is juxtaposed with the many burgeoning skyscrapers on the other side of the river – not to mention Elizabeth(s) Tower. There’s fun to be had, too, especially when Creed invites us to participate in his art: Work No. 210, Half the Air in a Given Space, is a room half-filled with white balloons: I’m lost in a sea of white; then, suddenly, other people emerge, adults grinning like children, people punching baloons, hair is standing on end from the static electricity. We’re losing ourselves, losing our inhibitions. Is it art? Who cares?

Work no. 200, 1998,Martin Creed, What’s the point of it, Hayward Gallery, 2014 Installation view, photo: Linda Nylind

One of the greatest criticisms of artists like Martin Creed is that they lack technical ability, that they can’t draw or paint like the Renaissance masters. While Creed’s drawings and paintings aren’t likely to convince you otherwise, I don’t think he’s really out to impress. Taken as they are, these more traditional artworks are beautiful in their way, and even his simplest drawings, little more than scribbles of pencil and pen on paper, show an affinity for form, line and tone.

Work No. 1806, 2014,Martin Creed, What’s the point of it, Hayward Gallery, 2014 Installation view, photo: Linda Nylind

That said, it is probably the more audacious, conceptual work that will stick with you. Creed seems to love forcing our emotions. You might be warmed by a neon sign that says ‘Don’t Worry’, get angry at a baffling video of a ferry very slowly coming in to dock, or feel disgusted and embarrassed by videos of people making themselves sick, or one of a young lady defecating on a pristine white floor. ‘I think that the best things get under people’s skin,’ Creed has said. Well, nobody could describe his work as forgettable.

Work no. 1000, 2009-2010. Martin Creed, What’s the point of it, Hayward Gallery, 2014 Installation view, photo: Linda Nylind

So am I convinced? Not entirely, but then I’m not sure I need to be. Creed doesn’t seem particularly concerned by what constitutes ‘high art’, and spending time in the company of his work, I’m inclined to wonder whether we often take art, and perhaps life in general, too seriously. Before leaving the exhibition and making my way back out into the drizzle, I nip to the toilet. There’s a speaker outside playing Creed laughing on a loop. Stuff like this can seem like a bit of a challenge: do you get it? Are you in on the joke? But that’s a bit cynical, isn’t it? After I’ve played in a room full of balloons and been frightened out of my wits by the word ‘MOTHERS’, I’m finding it a bit harder to be cynical. Perhaps that’s the point of it.

Martin Creed, What’s the Point of it is on at the Hayward Gallery, London until 5 May 2014