6040: Slightly better than 5050

I interviewed Martin Creed a few weeks ago for a Wonderland magazine. He gets quite a lot of stick for the, supposedly, conceptual work he makes. What a top chap. I really enjoyed his approach to making work – playful and honest – and that’s exactly what he was like to interview.

Sick, shit and the fear of failure.

Is this feature a piece of art? Is it my creation or a joint collaboration with the interviewee, the artist Martin Creed? For him there is no cut of point between the work he makes, the words he uses to talk about it and the conversation I’m having with him here. It’s part of his world and according to him everything in it – his thoughts, words, breath, shit (more on that later) – are tiny creations and in his view can be considered art. Whether you agree or not doesn’t really matter. It only matters to Martin.

But if everything in his world is an artistic creation, no separation from the gallery to the toilet, doesn’t that send you a bit mad? “In my mind it helps me. To feel well, instead of thinking that at a certain point when I enter a room I am then and artist, it kind of taking the pressure off. You can’t be on guard at all times. If putting on a show is like being on guard then you’re very conscious of presenting something out to people at a concentrated point in time, but in realty you’re doing it all the time.”

Martin Creed became infamous in 2001 for continuing the public denouncement of the Turner Prize by winning it with a piece of work that seemed to enrage the tabloids with its simplicity. Martin was labelled ‘Barmy’ by The Sun. ‘The lights going on and off’ consisted of two works, one with an interval of five seconds, the other for thirty and was exactly as the title implies; a room with the lights going on and off.

The press had a field day. After years of drubbing the young British artists of the mid to late 90s from the moment a shark in a tank was wheeled into a white cube, a conceptual artwork that seemed not to contain any art at all was given the winning prize of £20,000. The award undoubtedly has allowed the affable Scot to become an international artist of fame and standing, but you get the feeling that he would have got there anyway. Despite the jibes he is unfazed, because for him it isn’t just about one moment frozen in time.

Martin Creed’s world is more easily explained through his performance. It comes as a surprise to find that as well as his blue-tack stuck to the wall (Work No. 79) and ball of scrunched up paper (Work No. 88) he also does a one hour performance that is a convergence of stand up comedy, music gig and mime. Not that it’s really those things in the way you would expect them. The stand up is Martin on stage ad-libing, talking about his thought process at that very moment, explaining exactly how he is feeling and thinking about being on stage at that very moment. The music is him with his band, owada, the three-piece he has been performing with since 1994, singing songs such as ’1-100′ and ’1234′. Being stripped-down short punk tunes you can guess the lyrics as they have the same simplistic, minimal approach that Creed brings to his gallery work. The mime is him followed around stage by a dancer, or perhaps two, mimicking his every improvised movement. His own-brand version of a variety performance leaves the audience laughing but a little perplexed.

“Watching someone think live on stage is a bit difficult. To do things and keep it fresh that’s what I’m trying to do, but it’s difficult. That’s what it’s all about.
As soon as you have something that is exciting you try and grasp on to it and stay there, but even that after a while can become dead.

There are a number of things that are improvised in the performance.
The dancer that follows me around near the end is just a way of trying to amplify movement in the same way that the microphone amplifies the voice. Although it’s improvised I do make a lot of notes.”

It all seems a bit of a risk but the fear of failure is intrinsic to his work and you get the impression that he is throwing himself at the mercy of the audience to see what will happen, loved or loathed. Most people go on stage with a script, hoping their mind doesn’t go blank. Martin goes on blank, hoping a script will come.

“It’s a kind of reverse performance and it probably stems from a fear of performing, a fear of not being loved or a desire to be loved. When you go in front of an audience, you’ve got an immediate gauge of being liked of not.” Something he perhaps doesn’t get with his balloons half-filling a gallery (first one being Work No. 202) or neon “Everything is going to be alright” signs (Work No. 205).

His aim is not to have a goal and the result is something absurd and funny although being funny is not the intention, more a happy result. In fact, any goal or aim really does seem to get in the way.

“I’m totally aware that I’m asking the audience to sit through something and although they could leave it is a trapped situation. Comedy allows me to get out of that, but I don’t think I’m funny when I try to be funny. Comedy is such a specific goal it almost asks that you fail. But if you’re funny by accident then it’s kind of ok. I think I’m so scared of failure that if I don’t try and be funny and then I am by accident, it’s kind of ok. But I do think it’s important to me and to put it another way the things I usually like are the things that make me laugh.”

The common response to Martin’s work is that there is something to get, some great philosophy behind the simplicity; that it’s conceptual, something he denies. “I love expressionist paintings. If there’s any type my work falls into more than anything its expressionism. I’m just trying to express myself,” he says. The conceptual tag often alienates audiences creating a barrier not just between the audience and art in general, but between the audience and the object in front of them, not that Martin is shy of having the debate about it.

“I’ve always liked the degree of argument. Art objects are just things in the world. They’re not different from other objects. Maybe the fact that art objects are given this more rarefied treatment is what people object to. I think that there are many great artworks and some of them are TV shows, or films, or designs, but they’re not all put in art galleries.

That’s probably a flaw in my view. I think that Fawlty Towers is one of the greatest artworks of all time. It’s not just a great show. Or a Bob Dylan song; these are all great works of art. If it means something to you, in your mind and soul, then it’s art.”

What might be difficult for some to find meaning in are Martin’s latest works. The object this time is the human body and the “tiny creations” made during bodily functions, specifically being sick and having a shit.

The Sick films, shown in cinemas towards the end of 2006, involved volunteers walking into a white room to spew in anyway they saw fit. The Shit films, yet to be edited into an artwork but will probably appear in some format in 2007, involved another group of volunteers, this time from LA home of the porn industry and a place more open to people doing anything for money, to enter a white sealed room and let nature take its course. There is always the question of what’s the point, but with this it seems to loom even larger.

“It’s the first time I’ve used a body in the work. I’m always aware that in my installations it’s the audience, their bodies that bring it alive and complete it. When I design works I design spaces for the people to complete it – like in the lights going on and off piece. But the films are adding a layer of complexity.”

If the sick films are an attempt to capture a moment without thought where “you’re out of control” perhaps the shit film is to capture a point when we’re at out most contemplative? “Yeah, they’re like opposites, the mouth and ass – the front and the back. But I also thought of them as the sick film being like painting and the shit film being like sculpture.”

Created and described by anyone else you might feel like discarding this as pretentious rubbish. But Martin is the polar opposite of pretentiousness with his easy manner and willingness to talk about what he does. You end up just going along with the wry smile and believing that, as he did as a student, he “often made work that was hard to explain using words as it’s such a pressure put on to produce something that needed to be explained”.

It’s not that he’s trying to shock. “I find them difficult to watch. It’s like the ultimate taboo. It’s not that I find it easy at all. You know, I’m totally scared of shit. I’ve already gone though a lot of thoughts thinking why god am I doing this? And then thinking well, fuck, it’s just a bodily function and in many cultures it isn’t a taboo and we are animals as well as humans.”

Using other people in the performance could be seen as him wanting to be in control, directing from afar.

“Rationally I wanted to do it myself, maybe I should do it? With the set up I was thinking if I wanted to do it would I want anyone watching? So the set was built so that no one was there and there was only a video feed to another room. If I’d done it myself then it might be like a composer playing their own music – they might play it in a better way – the audience might take a special interest because it’s the artist doing it.” Something Martin doesn’t want. As with his other work, the simplicity and directness of the object and act is what he’s after. Here it is, plain and simple. If he was doing it himself the audience may feel that the artist is suggesting there’s a right, or artistic, way to shit perhaps.

Once again taken on their own the films can feel isolated, but placed in the ever increasing (although not a chronological order) numbered world of art that he creates they form a more complete narrative.

“Each piece is like a little punctuation mark in a longer sentence. One of the reasons I like doing the performance works and talking about them is because it’s a chance to combine the work together and to make a work that includes them in a bigger composition that has more of a narrative. I think of all of my work as a story of trying to make something, or the story of looking for something more than just the ordinary reality or everyday stuff.”

So is Martin Creed’s work a provocation designed to agitate people, mock the art establishment and strip the critics of their words? Or a breathing space where we can all stop and ponder?

“If something gets under your skin then that’s quite powerful; the worst thing is if something gets ignored, because then it’s like saying it has no meaning.

I want people to like my work and if it’s a breathing space I’d be happy about that. If people walk into a gallery and see something that is straight and simple and deadpan then it’s some kind of relief.”