martedì 25 febbraio 2014

MARTIN CREED: WHAT'S THE POINT OF IT? - HAYWARD GALLERY, LONDON





MARTIN CREED
WHAT'S THE POINT OF IT?
Haywad Gallery
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road - London
29 January - 27 April 2014

The Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre is proud to announce the first major survey of work by internationally-acclaimed artist Martin Creed. Opening on 29 January 2014, the exhibition will bring together the full range and scale of Creed’s work, spanning its most minimal moments – a spot of blu-tack – to extravagant room-sized installations, neons, sequential sculptures, kinetic installations, films, and vibrant paintings.
British artist Martin Creed (b.1968) is best known for his Turner-prize winning installation The Lights Going On and Off (2000), and more recently, for his UK wide piece All the Bells in a Country Rung as Quickly and Loudly as Possible for Three Minutes, which launched the London 2012 Festival.
Since the beginning of his career, when he started sequentially numbering his works, Creed has developed a minimalistic approach that strips away the unnecessary, but manages to preserve an abundance of wit, humour and surprise. Work No. 319 (2004), a room half-filled with balloons, is a joyous and chaotic social experience. In other works, a piano lid or door opens and shuts automatically; 39 metronomes simultaneously tick at different speeds; giant paintings fill entire walls; and everyday objects are collected into sequences and series.
For the first time in the UK, the exhibition will present some of Creed’s earliest works and also the pivotal Work No. 1000 (2009-10), a monumental colour series comprised of 1000 prints made with broccoli. The artist’s portrait paintings as well as a number of new sculptural commissions will be among his most recent works to be featured in the exhibition that will occupy both floors of the Hayward Gallery as well as its outdoor terraces.

Cliff Lauson, Hayward Gallery Curator, said: “Martin Creed has been recognised around the world for his art that is both playful and thought-provoking. Crossing all artistic media and including musical and performative elements, his works transform common materials and actions into surprising meditations on existence, choice, and the invisible structures that shape our everyday experiences. We are very excited to be the first gallery to take a comprehensive look at the past 25 years of his work.” To coincide with his retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre has commissioned Martin Creed to create a new work for the Royal Festival Hall organ as part of the Pull Out All of The Stops Festival which celebrates the complete restoration and reinstallation of the organ. Key performances during Martin Creed’s retrospective at Hayward Gallery will be the premiere of his new organ commission, entitled Face to Face with Bach on 30 March and the performance of Creed’s band and ballet Work No. 1020 on 8 April.

Martin Creed was born in 1968 in Wakefield, England and was brought up in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied art at the Slade School of Art, London from 1986-1990. Creed is one of the United Kingdom’s leading artists and winner of the 2001 Turner Prize. His work has been exhibited internationally and is collected by venues including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art; the Centre Pompidou–Metz, France; Tate Modern, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Recently, Creed’s Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes opened the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic celebrations as part of the London 2012 Festival. Music has always been an integral part of Creed’s work and in 1994 he founded the band Owada, which is now known and releases albums as the Martin Creed Band. Creed lives and works in London and spends time in Alicudi, Italy.