Missing..... Martin Creed

I'm going to do my best not to be that whiney person who never gets over the fact they had an incredible overseas adventure only to move somewhere else in search of other adventures. No one likes that person. Not really.

That being said....

Martin Creed, Work No.200. Half the Air in A Given Room, 1998

A Martin Creed crush and a date to Sketch

I rather love the work of Martin Creed. There’s a manly sort of whimsy to much of it, leaving aside his more-realist-than-needs-be Sick and Sex films, which I encountered for the first time at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in 2008 while still studying my MA. There are times when an image really shouldn’t get stuck in your head…

But there’s a deftness too in the way he ascribes art amongst the ordinary and everyday and a sense of amusement too, more than perhaps humour. I’m not sure if you would call it conceptual art punctured by an unpretentious realism or realist art with a witty and knowing surrealist bent.

Martin Creed, Work No. 227, 2001

Creed is perhaps most famous for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 for his Work No.227 – the infamous room with the lights that turned themselves on and off. But I’m thinking of his 2008 Duveen Commission for Tate Britain, Work no. 850, where an athlete ran the length of the Duveen Galleries, full pelt, every 30 seconds, every day from July to November and Work No. 409 (2005), that’s now installed in the JCB lift at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. Here, a recording plays every time the lift is used: a group of singers’ voices rise and fall as the lift ascends and descends. It’s both theatrically daggy and unapologetically it is what it is that you can’t help but like it.

Martin Creed, Work No. 850, 2008

Aaaanyway. Creed’s latest work can be found at Sketch on Conduit St. Sketch is many things – achingly cool among them – but in amongst the kinetic sculptures, members bars and impressive cocktail lists there’s also a restaurant. I’ve been to Sketch once before – to the bar with someone who knew someone who worked on the door and I caught a glimpse of the restaurant then on my way to the famed bathrooms (google it to believe it). At the time, it had wallpaper in the form of some sort of video art, with deer ambling their way across the walls. Now, the restaurant has Martin Creed.

Specifically, it has Work No. 1343 and Work No. 1347, two works specially commissioned in the first of a programme of artist-conceived restaurants at Sketch. The commission specifically is to create an environment that is “at once an exhibition, an artwork and a restaurant” and that was all I needed to know to make a booking for Lovely Boy and myself over the Easter long weekend. Tori would be horrified, chef Pierre Gagnaire would likely be offended, but I didn’t even bother to look at the menu before making the booking, such is my Commitment To Contemporary Art.

Martin Creed redefining a pop-up menu at Sketch

Lovely Boy thought we should postpone, what with my hacking, gagging and trailing tissues but I was nothing if not charmingly stubborn. And I’m so glad we went. And not just because the food was as good as the art.

Martin Creed Work No. 1347 & Work No. 1343, 2012
(With the lights on....) Image c/ Sketch

Creed’s two works take in the floor - Work No. 1347 - 96 different types of earthy coloured marble from all around the world, arranged in zigzag formation across the room and then Work No. 1343 – basically everything else. Creed has taken out the tables, chairs, cutlery, glassware, crockery, light fittings, lamps, bar stools and video art and replaced everything with something unique. It’s a dazzling partnership of art and function as handmade meets mass-produced with antiques, contemporary design and junk store chic coming together across decades and continents to create a dynamic, colourful, clever but resolutely unpretentious space where no two objects are the same.

A nice press image c/ Sketch

We were sat at a yellow Formica table, my seat an old wooden swivel chair with inlaid designs and a horse embroidered cushion and my wine glass a memento from the Willesden West Rotary Club. The gentleman at the table next to us was sitting in one of those lecture hall seats with the attached desk while across the room another chair was covered entirely in what looked like leather post-it notes. Each wall had its own large-scale work of art and only the bar staff matched in their smart black and white striped shirts.

Some more press images c/ Sketch

It was such an engaged, lively, lovely environment to be in, with the mishmash of lights overhead washing the space in a warm, intimate light and the way in which the outdoor furniture negated the ostentatious Chanel jewellery of its sitter across the room. Our waiter told us that every evening the room is rearranged so no two experiences are the same. It’s like that childhood birthday game where you move amongst the chairs in time to the music but instead of one being removed, it’s simply replaced. And happily, no one goes without cake.  

Our collection of wine and water glasses

Refreshingly, given the whole set up, the service was totally without pretension and the staff were as informed about Creed’s work as they were about the menu. Broadbean soup with goats cheese for entree, veal blanquette for main and sorbet and macaroons for dessert, the food was a perfect mix of interesting and delicious and I can still taste the bubblegum in Lovely Boy’s dessert, something called a Malabar featuring Bourbon vanilla-infused milk, strawberry mousse, bubble gum ice cream and marshmallow. Bloody hell it was good.

As an art experiece, it was joyous – humorous, democratic, memorable. As a food experience, it was sophisticated and fun. I’m not sure what else you can ask for, but my admiration for Creed continues, as does my love for non-traditional art-filled, art-fuelled environs.

It was such a special night, one of those crazy truly London-only moments, reinforced by the amble home down Regents St to Piccadilly Circus tube. I have to confess it wasn’t a cheap night but then, only Damien Hirst puts a price on art right? 

Culture fatigue

If I appear listless or lacking in humour I apologise at the outset - it's entirely possible my capacity for wit and clever insight was left at the roadstop in Oxford last night on the way home from Liverpool. What a loooo-o-ooong last few days it has been. Amazing in so many ways but I am now so tired I don't even have the energy to watch America's Next Top Model - surely the one true and effective antidote to a serious case of Culture Fatigue.

I got home late last night from our three day trip to the North of England - Sudeley Castle (which is in the Cotswolds if anyone is interested...), Birmingham to see the Martin Creed exhibition at Ikon Gallery and then two days in Liverpool for the Biennial. 2008 European Capital of Culture maybe but sometimes a dump is just a dump, you know? Certainly a hectic few days - but in many ways also the ultimate magical mystery tour (sorry - couldn't help myself) of all things art and crazy.

Sudeley Castle was on the list because every year it holds an outdoor sculpture event called Reconstruction. Contemporary art meets gothic ruins - that sort of thing. A fabulous idea really and a fabulous exhibition too - despite the rain - thank goodness for sculpted hedges to hide under. These were just two of my favourite works - taken between bouts of thunderous downpour. This here being a work by Henry Krokatsis (the name of which escapes me....)


And this one, by Kevin Francis Gray, which was particularly evocative - especially when you looked up at her face through the beads...



Just insane. Won't go all art theory on you but suffice to say there's been a lot to think about and it's been fascinating. Not like Birmingham - rife with idling police oficers thanks to the Conservative Party Conference that was also on that day. Ikon Gallery though was great and an interesting exhibition of Martin Creed's work, despite the videos of vomiting and anal sex. For those of you that don't know, Creed won the Turner Prize a couple of years ago for his installation featuring a room with a light that went on and off. And then on and off again. And then...

We also saw an amazing project by an Italian artist called Claudia Losi that was all about whales.

Uh huh.

Anyway - Birmingham was a flying visit and we got to Liverpool (after leaving London at 7.30am) at 7.30pm. The whole experience was rather like school camp - long bus trips, communal lolly eating etc etc - except at this camp you got to stay at the Holiday Inn Express. Thankfully we didn't spend much time there (a hotel whose chief appeal is its proximity to the Beatles Museum doesn't hold much sway with a bunch of girls from London it has to be said...)

The Biennial had a lot on offer - sadly most of it was seen in the rain on the first day - not the most conducive of conditions for viewing outdoor sculpture - especially when you add icy winds and an ambient 8 degrees.

As with any biennial of this scale there was a lot of dross but enough sparkling moments of genuine ingenuity, beauty, perplexity, humour and intelligence to make it overwhelmingly worthwhile. Highlights would include Ai Wei Wei's Web of Light...


Richard Wilson's Turning the Place Over...

Steve Mcqueen's Queen and Country (no pictures sadly but the most beautiful, brilliant work about the Iraq War and all the British soldiers who have died in the conflict) and Yayoi Kasuma's totally immersive and utterly hypnotic Gleaming Lights of the Souls...


This was one of the very last works we saw before beginning the shlep back to London. She's a Japanese artist who lives voluntarily in a mental asylum (though she comes out for openings apparently...) Her work is exquisite and totally trippy - you certainly get a sense, among other things, of what it would be like to suffer, as Yayoi does, from a vision constantly obscured by hallucinogenic-like dots. In this work you enter a darkened enclosed space with mirrored walls and roof and a floor of water surrounding the small standing platform. The room is dark but for a series of suspended light bulbs that change colour intermittently - creating an otherworldly, ad infinitum experience. It was fairly magical. And quite mysterious.

There were other highlights of course, one of which was getting to know more of the girls on the course. We didn't sit around singing camp songs or braiding each others hair but we drank a bit and gossiped and bitched - talked art and shoes and boys. And we were all of us thrilled to get back to London last night. Nothing like a six hour bus trip for a bit of communal bonding.

No plans for the weekend - though half of Saturday has already been squandered because I refuse to get out of bed it's so fucking cold - but looking forward to next week - Rothko at the Tate Modern, some great lectures, return of the first assignments... And then Berlin. I mean "Reading Week"...