75 x 100 cm
This photograph of Martin Creed himself was used as the invitation card for a fundraising auction of works on paper at Christie’s South Kensington in support of Camden Arts Centre’s first year in a refurbished building in 2005. His broad smile, on the verge of laughter, encourages reciprocity on behalf of the onlooker. This could be said to be a typical tactic in Creed’s work as it is so infused with humor and irony. To him, art is like a game, or certainly very much a part of banal reality. Within the genre of self-portraits, this subverts the usual tradition of images of the artist as creator. Creed often jokes or questions whether the artwork (or in this case the persona of the artist) has any value or exists. Standing in front of a very British brick wall which likely carries art historical connections and puns, Creed seems to mock or certainly stand amazed at his own commercial success. In 2001, he won the Turner Prize with his controversial Work No. 227. The Lights Going on and off. “I want to make things. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s got something to do with other people. I think I want to try to communicate with other people, because I want to say ‘hullo’, because I want to express myself, and because I want to be loved”.
Martin Creed is a sculptor, filmmaker, performer and installation artist. Working within a minimal or conceptual mode, most of his artworks, objects, statements, suggestions or performances are titled “Work” and numbered. He wittily subverts the definitions of art and often uses mundane modest materials such as Blu-Tack, balloons, tape, piles of paper. In 1993, Work No. 81 consisted of a one-inch cube of masking tape in the middle of every wall in a London firm and since 1998 Work No. 200 proposes “the air in a given space” through filling it with balloons. Yet any anti-materialism is occasionally counteracted like in the marble staircase realized for the city of Edinburgh or the bronze sculptures. Creed is constantly reappraising things and nothings and all incumbent relations. During 5 months in 2008, Work No. 280 London runners sprinting one by one through the Duveen Galleries in Tate Britain. Martin Creed was born in Wakefield, UK, 1968. He lives and works in London, UK and Alicudi, Italy.
Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...
Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...
Since 2005, Charles Avery has devoted his practice to the perpetual description of a fictional island...
In Stong Sory Vegetables , Laure Prouvost explains that she woke up one morning and that some vegetables had fallen from the sky on her bed, making a hole in her ceiling...
In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...
“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...
The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...
Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...
In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...
“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective...
Comprised of fifty-one photographic postcards, Antin’s 100 Boots is an epic visual narrative in which 100 black rubber boots stand in for a fictional “hero” making a “trip” from California to New York City...
Priapus Agonistes by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley is the first work in The Minotaur Trilogy (2013-2015), a trio of videos that reimagine the Greek myth of the Minotaur...
Celebrating the monstrous other: "Anak Pontianak" and "Nobody" at LumiNation | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Courtesy of The Filmic Eye August 5, 2019 By ila (1,100 words, 6-minute read) The year is 2049: two hundred years since the Pontianak first appeared in writing, marked insignificantly in Hikayat Abdullah as residues of superstitious and foolish beliefs of the Chinese and Malays that have persisted with time...
His Deck Painting I recalls the simplistic stripes of conceptual artist Daniel Buren, or the minimal lines of twentieth century abstract painting, but is in reality a readymade, fashioned from repurposed fabric of deck chairs...
Fred Wilson’s flag paintings document the 20th century history of African people, indexing the period of liberation from colonialism...
Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...
Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...
‘I thought I was god’s gift to China’: art gallery owner Pearl Lam on her ‘colonial attitude’ and embracing her ethnicity | South China Morning Post ‘I thought I was god’s gift to China’: art gallery owner Pearl Lam on her ‘colonial attitude’ and embracing her ethnicity Profile Art gallery owner Pearl Lam on growing up as the daughter of property tycoon Lim Por-yen, losing her colonial mindset and celebrating diversity Kate Whitehead + FOLLOW Published: 7:45am, 3 Dec, 2023 Why you can trust SCMP I was born in Hong Kong and lived in Jardine’s Lookout...
She saves Hong Kong’s neon signs, but it was a Taiwanese mansion that triggered her journey | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Architecture and design + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more Cardin Chan is general manager of Tetra Neon Exchange, which rescues and preserves Hong Kong’s disappearing neon signs...
My Mom Wants To Go Back Home - Photographs by Hanna Hrabarska | Interview by Sophie Wright | LensCulture Feature My Mom Wants To Go Back Home Documenting her journey from Ukraine to The Netherlands with her mother, Hanna Hrabarska’s visual diary grapples with the experience of being forced to leave one’s home in the face of war—and the challenges of arriving in a new country...