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...
Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...
Following its display at the General Idea retrospective in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam The post AIDS Sculpture By General Idea Finds Permanent Home In Amsterdam Park appeared first on Artlyst ....
“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...
In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...
Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 2012)...
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...
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...
“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...
In 2008, Grassie was invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to document the transformation of some of its spaces...
In Fiction on Auction , the site of the auction is used to stage a fiction where the right to appear as character in Looking for Headless is offered to the highest bidder: the name of the successful biddder as registered for the auction will form the name or identity of the character appearing in the novel...
Fred Wilson’s flag paintings document the 20th century history of African people, indexing the period of liberation from colonialism...
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...
Glaze (Savana) (2005) is an assemblage of found materials: a car wheel, a tire, and a wooden plinth of the type traditionally used to display sculpture...
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...