British Council

Creed was born in Wakefield, his family relocating to Glasgow when Creed was three years old. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1986 - 1990, then lived and worked in London from 1990 - 2001, during this time also extending his practice into musical composition with his group project OWADA. Creed relocated to Alicudi, Italy in 2001 and now lives and works in both London and Alicudi. Creed was the Turner Prize winner at Tate Britain in 2001. His first solo exhibition was held at Starkmann Limited, London in 1993. Since this time, he has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions in Camden Arts Centre, London, 1995, The British School at Rome, 1997, Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 1999, Southampton City Art Gallery, 2000, Kunsthalle Bern, 2003 and Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2004. His group exhibitions include Outta Here, Transmission Gallery, 1992, Affinata, Castello di Rivara, Turin, and Ace!, Hayward Gallery, London, 1996, Dimensions Variable, Helsinki City Art Museum, 1997, Speed, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1998, Intelligence, Tate Triennial of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain. London, and Protest and Survive, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2000, Art/Music: Rock, Pop, Techno, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Space-Jack!, Yokohama Museum, 2001, Tempo, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Rock My World, CCAC, San Francisco, 2002, Adorno, Kunstverein Frankfurt, and Shine, Museum Boijmans Van Beunungen, Rotterdam, 2003 and State of Play, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2004.

Martin Creed's work is concerned with the tension between something and nothing, with what exactly constitutes an artwork, and the value of that work in relation to the world around it. A work from 1996 entitled the whole world + the work = the whole world eloquently conveys this inquiry; the work existing as a formula which negates its very existence and integration into the world around it through the simple action of reading and comprehension. The piece is presented either as neon signage, or perhaps as a simple printed text on an A4 sheet of paper, the form depending on the context the artist feels suits best at the time of exhibiting.

Everything Creed makes is assigned a work number and catalogued; from interventional objects to writing, songs and interviews. The number system is often assigned in a non-linear fashion and does not necessarily relate to the date a piece was created, but a number, once assigned, is never used again. Work #158, 1996, is a simple sheet of framed A4 white office paper with the sentence 'something on the left, just as you come in, not too high or low' printed in black ink. The framed piece of A4 hangs on the wall exactly as described. Work #115, 1995, is subtitled 'a doorstop fixed to a floor to let a door open only 30 degrees', which is again, exactly what the viewer encounters on entering the gallery. Through these subtle interventions, Creed alters our experience of the gallery to startling effect; the annoyance of having to squeeze through a semi-opening gallery door, or as in Work #100, avoid an awkwardly placed cubic stack of tiles built on top of an existing tile in a gallery toilet. The excitement of being engulfed in hundreds of inflated white balloons Work #204, 1999; 'half the air in a given space' or the strangely moving metaphor for human emotion in Work #127, 1995; 'the lights going on and off'.

Work #78, 1993, is described; 'as many 2.5cm squares as are necessary cut from 2.5cm Elastoplast tape and piled up, adhesive sides down, to form a 2.5cm cubic stack'. Of this work, Creed has said; "If anything, this work began as an attempt to make something, if not nothing. If that, the problem was to attempt to establish, amongst other things, what material something could be, what shape something could be, what size something could be, how something could be constructed, how something could be situated, how something could be attached, how something could be positioned, how something could be displayed, how something could be portable, how something could be packaged, how something could be stored, how something could be certified, how something could be presented, how something could be for sale, what price something could be, and how many of something could there be, or should be, if any, if at all".

De la Moore la Hirst: 60 de ani de sculptura Britanica (From Moore to Hirst: Sixty Years of British Sculpture), The British Council and the National Museum of Art, Bucharest 2004

www.martincreed.com