Martin Creed Exhibition and Talk (30/03/2014)

Last week I visited Martin Creed's 'What's the Point of It?' exhibition at the Hayward and attended a talk given by the artist afterwards. I have encountered Creed's work in lectures, books and online many times before and have a great interest in his use of everyday objects and the controversy they always seem to ignite. I was really happy to see works I have read about as well as work I wasn't familiar with. I found it a really engaging exhibition.

Something that struck me very quickly was the whimsical nature of everything Creed does; this was evident not only in the work, but in how it was displayed, how it extended to the foyer, how each work had a number with no obvious chronology, how his vomiting videos were shown in a room that you couldn't not enter to get to the exit. It was really refreshing to experience this kind of atmosphere in a large gallery where the viewer was allowed and encouraged to laugh. However, I couldn't help thinking of all the people who would have visited the exhibition with no prior knowledge of his work, perhaps as a way to spend the afternoon or on a family day out, and how confused, angry, appalled, offended they might have been by this notion of contemporary art. To me it seemed as if Creed was actively encouraging the 'my five year old...' response by including works with established connections with infantile art such as felt tips, vegetable prints and paintings using primary colours. I think this is where Creed really stands out to me, in the way he addresses our preconceptions about what belongs in a gallery and what is worth putting on display.

Creed's blu-tac is always mentioned by my housemates when we argue over contemporary and conceptual art (it would seem that the more ordinary and the more mundane, the more anger is provoked). For me the blu-tac is a symbol of Creed's belief that he spoke about in his talk, of how everything we do is an act of creativity. I also believe that art and life are the same, that there can be no distinction because art is an outcome of our experience of life. The placement of a piece of blu-tac is both a conscious and unconscious decision, and this as an artwork represents how every action we make, no matter how absent-minded, is still an impression made on the world. At the same time, the blu-tac is also just a piece of blu-tac. My favourite thing about Creed’s work is this absurd irony, the viewer either feels guilt, for not understanding the deeper meaning it is assumed must be there, or feels foolish for being over-thoughtful and seeing in one piece of blu-tac the whole of human life as a metaphor.

Creed is an interesting reference for my own work because of the objects and materials he uses - those of the everyday (blu-tac, tape, paper, cardboard...). Although my work is quite different to his in the way I am using and manipulating these materials, the associations that go along with them are likely to be the same.  In Creed's work, the cardboard makes me think of processes, factories, travel, containment; the tape decorating the walls made me think of occasions, ceremony, purpose; the screwed up A4 paper made me think of school, of uniformity and custom. I have never really thought to find other artists who use the same materials specifically to observe the their connotations, however I think it would be a useful thing to do.

One of the most memorable works in the exhibition for me was a felt tip drawing. I thought at first it was a strange, blurred photograph and took quite a while to understand what it was, because I had never seen pen used in this way before. This made it a really extraordinary image because felt tips and the marks they make are very familiar, if not the most broadly familiar medium because everyone uses them when they are a child and experimenting comes naturally. I couldn't find a photo of the image I saw but found a similar work that shows the style Creed was using.

I have made a few drawings inspired by this way of using felt tips, allowing the paper to use up the ink and become increasingly scratchy. I'd really love to do this on a bigger scale, although the larger the drawings become, the less ink in the pen and the fainter the marks become, the drawing dies as it grows.