Martin Creed cheered up the Turner prize no end seven years ago, when he won the award for a piece that consisted of a gallery’s lights being switched on and off. The work was called The Lights Going On and Off.
Now the artist is back with a new piece that is likely to prove just as irritating to traditionalists.
Creed’s Work No 850 is a single athlete running at top speed through the Duveen galleries at Tate Britain in central London — every 30 seconds, all day, every day.
PHOTO: AGENCIES
It is the latest in a series of sculpture commissions to occupy the elegant neoclassical galleries, which stretch back 86m from the museum’s main entrance on the banks of the Thames. Visitors to Tate Britain will see a runner streak past them, dashing “as if their life depended on it,” according to the artist’s instructions.
After a runner has made the 86m sprint (which will take about 12 seconds) there will be a 15-second pause — like a rest in a piece of music, according to Creed. Then the next runner will dash forth.
The runners have been recruited from various athletics magazines. Each will work a four-hour shift, with sprints interspersed with rests. They are to be paid US$20 an hour; and the Tate will be recruiting more runners through its Web site in due course. “We’re desperate to find enough people to keep it going for eight hours a day until November,” said Creed.
PHOTO: AGENCIES
“As soon as I was asked [to tackle the Duveen Galleries] I immediately thought of people running through them,” he said. “I wanted to use the whole space, instead of putting an object in it. The runner is like a guide showing you the whole space.”
The piece has a certain mystery to it: why is the runner running? To what? From what? “They are running urgently,” said Creed, “to complete the work.”
Is it pretentious, asked someone. “No, it is not pretentious. No one is pretending. They are just running,” said Creed.
“And is it art?” ventured another. “It’s not for me to say what art is. I hope people enjoy it and I hope they find something in it. I make my work because I want to make my life better, to make things exciting and fun and enticing.”
The appeal of the running figure, according to the artist, is simple: “Running is a beautiful thing. You do it without a pool, or a bike; it is the body doing as much as it can on its own.”
The pauses between the sprints, he said, provide a “frame” for looking at the runner, helping him to “display someone running.” He also likened the gallery to a theater, “a theater for looking at things.”
In some ways, Work 850 is not so far removed from the exhibition that has just come down from the Duveen Galleries: a lavish confection of neoclassical sculpture with Canova’s Three Graces as its climax. Like that display, Work 850 encourages the viewer to focus on the human form — but this time the body, far from locked in marble motionlessness, is galloping hell for leather.
“Running is the opposite of being still. If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it’s an example of aliveness,” said Creed.
It was crucial, he said, that there should be no separation between runners and visitors; that the runners should have to weave past visitors and the visitors should be able to experience the runners directly, without a roped-off area. Nevertheless, those who take it upon themselves to join in the fun will be peremptorily stopped by museum security. “Running is not allowed in the galleries,” said Creed.
Part of the inspiration for the piece had come, he explained, when he was trying to visit the catacombs of the Capuchin monks in Palermo. Arriving just before closing time, Creed and his friends had only five minutes to see the museum — so they ran through it, trying to glimpse the display of dead bodies at a trot.
“It made me think, why do we have to look at paintings for a long time?” he said. “Why not just look for a second? One way isn’t necessarily better than another way. When I go to see a painting I like I sometimes feel very self-conscious as I stand before it, thinking, ‘I am now having the experience of looking at art.’”
Creed, who was born in 1968 in Wakefield, is currently in training. In about a month, he thinks, he will be sufficiently fit to take part in his own work.
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