Martin Creed Artist Research

I was informed about Martin Creed by one of my tutors after beginning a series of prints of my breasts. After doing a little reading into the driving force of Creed's practice I found myself relating to his sense of wondering whether everything is nonsense. I often have ideas that I class as complete idiocrasy, however, A couple of times this year I have made a joke that has turned into some of my most successful works ("If I put tits on it will you care?" "Climate Crisis" nude with male nipples..). 

I also would consider myself an expressionist as I am far more interested in the emotion/feeling conveyed in a piece and using my emotion to push my artistic choices. These prints started as a way to prove to my brain that I existed as an entity that took up space in the world. The process of applying paint to my skin and the physical act of lying onto a sheet of paper was such a grounding feeling. I had no idea what to expect from the result and it pushed my creative drive into multiple directions that I couldn't have thought of without going through that experience.

I am a dancer and have been all my life. I used repetition to keep up a rhythm of creating but I would love to incorporate more movement into my art. I don't know whether that would be in fast and expressive gestures like Ceroc (a type of modern jive), or whether I want to maintain the elegance of Ballet which formed the first 14 years of my life. Prints are also very static so should I revert back to painting but maybe with my hands or a brush? I'm not sure yet but I am discovering a little bit more of who I am everyday and I am enjoying representing that.

His work “reflects on the unease we face meeting choices, the comfort we find in repetition, the desire to control and the unstable losses of control that shape our existence”. I like how he targets the feelings that as a human you can connect to instantly. There is no pretentiousness in his work and he doesn't seek to dive deeper into the possible meanings that he may have created. He didn't let his conflicts and worries stop him. Whenever he reaches an obstacle such as making a decision he just picks all the options to continue ploughing forwards. I am useless at making decisions so this could be a technique I employ to keep my creative juices flowing.

I have compiled my highlights of an article about one of his exhibitions:

"Creed is the artist of irresolution in which he devotes himself to an idea but can then never quite complete it without wondering whether it isn’t all a nonsense."

"You might think that a pile of boxes, some scrunched-up paper, cubes of masking tape or a pile of planks shouldn’t be taken too seriously but then you half suspect that Creed doesn’t either. If his works rarely descend to the pretentious, it is because of Creed feels ambiguous and conflicted in himself and wants to share that with a public who feel the same thing."

"In the first room, the artist has placed along the walls 39 metronomes, Work No. 112. Thirty-nine metronomes beating time, one at every speed. He says that he did it because he didn’t want to choose which pace to set them, although the effect is an aural one of driving pace and competitive rhythm."

"Repetition is something that keeps recurring in his work, in the ziggurats he builds with metal beams, the pyramid of pink lavatory paper, the thousand prints of broccoli sections and his cubes of plywood planks. It appeals partly to his sense of rhythm. He is a composer and band leader himself. But it also reflects the obsessive way in which he approaches a work as a task to be performed with total diligence. Not for nothing was he brought up in Scotland."

"Not that Martin Creed has ever accepted the notion that he is a conceptual artist as such. “Expressionist” is the description he uses and places great emphasis on art as a matter of feeling. You can talk, and curators love to, about how his work “reflects on the unease we face meeting choices, the comfort we find in repetition, the desire to control and the unstable losses of control that shape our existence”, to quote the introduction to the exhibition. And that is certainly something he subscribes to. Irresolute himself, he sense that is part of the human condition, something to be encompassed in his work, and even treasured."

"He says that he continues the practice to get out of himself in his studio. Having a sitter forces him to react to the world outside. Maybe, but the speed at which he seeks to capture the face (he does it in a single sitting) and his experimentation with pencil and watercolour suggests an artist becoming increasingly concerned with the possibilities of the medium over and above the capture of a likeness."

"The video of a constipated girl attempting to crap, as a film he has made of a man being sick, can no doubt be justified as making a point about natural function and evacuation. “Living,” as the artist explains “is a matter of trying to come to terms with what comes out of you… That includes shit and sick and horrible feeling. The problem with horrible feelings is you can’t paint them. But horrible vomit – you can film that.”"

"Besides being painful to watch, the sight of it remains exactly what it is, no more or less."

"But then he also approaches, as he says, each work as a separate task, working away at it in isolation of other works. Which is how most gallery-goers will approach this exhibition and, indeed, how the Hayward implicitly suggests they should, in an excellent little pamphlet accompanying the show, setting out themes in alphabetical order."

Actually, there is a point to Martin Creed | The Independent | The Independent