Works of contemporary art are mainly opened to various interpretations, unfinished, with ambiguous meaning, but I have never seen this characteristic so well shown as on exhibition of Martin Creed in Hayward gallery in multimedia center Southbank.
He is using every corner of the gallery (and goes out of that corners, using doors, balcony, outdoor wall) to show his concept, his playfulness without artificial mental boundaries. He says that he has a problem with making decisions, so that is why his drawings, videos, installations… have an „opened end“, but in the contrast to other contemporary artist, his work seems very well deliberate and complete, supported by clear attitudes, for which he finds funny and clever solutions that he combines in an creative structure. Is not that kind of work that asks from viewer big amount of creativity and energy to imagine what could be the purpose of watching it (because artist didn’t have time to work on that part).
This exhibition includes work containing some adult content, nudity and bodily functions. But they are used not to shock us or to deny their original meaning, but to surprise us by pointing out the potential of a playfulness of this matter.
In his work, Martin Creed thinks about viewer’s common knowledge and expectations, and how these can be shaken and deconstructed. That is what he did in „Work No. 227“, for which he won Turner prize in 2001, when he programmed lights to switch on and off in an empty gallery space. That work doesn’t exist without viewers expectations and habits connected to the space of gallery. That work changed viewers perception about the gallery space, and in a some way, part of their world. His famous saying is: the whole world + work = the whole world.
