Martin Creed won the Turner Prize for an empty room in which the lights simply switched on and off. He has spent the decades since making art from equally small, precise gestures: a ball of Blu Tack, a sheet of crumpled paper, a room half filled with balloons.
Numbering every work he makes rather than titling it, he treats painting, sculpture, music and performance as equally valid outlets for the same underlying interest in systems, repetition and the rules people impose on themselves. His practice often takes a simple, self-imposed constraint, such as using only paintbrushes bought in a single multipack. Creed's numbered system extends into an active print practice, in which many of his editions are produced as unique variants rather than identical copies.
Numbering every work he makes rather than titling it, he treats painting, sculpture, music and performance as equally valid outlets for the same underlying interest in systems, repetition and the rules people impose on themselves. His practice often takes a simple, self-imposed constraint, such as using only paintbrushes bought in a single multipack. Creed's numbered system extends into an active print practice, in which many of his editions are produced as unique variants rather than identical copies.
Summary
Martin Creed won the Turner Prize for an empty room in which the lights simply switched on and off. He has spent the decades since making art from equally small, precise gestures: a ball of Blu Tack, a sheet of crumpled paper, a room half filled with balloons.
Numbering every work he makes rather than titling it, he treats painting, sculpture, music and performance as equally valid outlets for the same underlying interest in systems, repetition and the rules people impose on themselves. His practice often takes a simple, self-imposed constraint, such as using only paintbrushes bought in a single multipack. Creed's numbered system extends into an active print practice, in which many of his editions are produced as unique variants rather than identical copies.
Numbering every work he makes rather than titling it, he treats painting, sculpture, music and performance as equally valid outlets for the same underlying interest in systems, repetition and the rules people impose on themselves. His practice often takes a simple, self-imposed constraint, such as using only paintbrushes bought in a single multipack. Creed's numbered system extends into an active print practice, in which many of his editions are produced as unique variants rather than identical copies.
Artworks by Martin Creed
About Martin Creed
Biography
About Martin Creed
Martin Creed was born in 1968 in Wakefield, England, moving to Glasgow with his family at the age of three. Raised in a Quaker household, he studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1986 to 1990. He has numbered every single piece he’s made since 1987, regardless of medium or scale.
The lights going on and off
Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off: an empty gallery room in which the lights switched on and off at five second intervals. The work provoked ridicule in the press, including a protester who threw eggs at the walls. It has since become one of the most discussed works in the prize's history and is part of Tate's permanent collection.
Other works have included a room filled halfway with balloons and a ball of Blu Tack pressed against a wall.
Editions, numbered and unique
Creed's prints follow the same rule-based logic as his other work. For a series of screenprints made with Counter Editions, he set a palette of colours and a fixed mark for each one, then let the printers sequence the colours at random across an edition of 100. Every print carries the same system but no two are identical.
He has continued to produce lithographs and screenprints with publishers Counter Editions and Cristea Roberts Gallery, extending his numbered Work series onto paper.
Biography
About Martin Creed
Martin Creed was born in 1968 in Wakefield, England, moving to Glasgow with his family at the age of three. Raised in a Quaker household, he studied at the Slade School of Art in London from 1986 to 1990. He has numbered every single piece he’s made since 1987, regardless of medium or scale.
The lights going on and off
Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off: an empty gallery room in which the lights switched on and off at five second intervals. The work provoked ridicule in the press, including a protester who threw eggs at the walls. It has since become one of the most discussed works in the prize's history and is part of Tate's permanent collection.
Other works have included a room filled halfway with balloons and a ball of Blu Tack pressed against a wall.
Editions, numbered and unique
Creed's prints follow the same rule-based logic as his other work. For a series of screenprints made with Counter Editions, he set a palette of colours and a fixed mark for each one, then let the printers sequence the colours at random across an edition of 100. Every print carries the same system but no two are identical.
He has continued to produce lithographs and screenprints with publishers Counter Editions and Cristea Roberts Gallery, extending his numbered Work series onto paper.