Martin Creed: What’s the Point of It?

Surprisingly good retrospective of work by Martin Creed at the Hayward Gallery.

This was definitely a show I went to on the grounds I go to everything I can. The reviews in the papers had been dire and I hated his Turner Prize winning room with the light going on and off but in for a penny (or in this case £11)!

However I loved it! Just walking into the first room to be greeted by the huge rotating neon sign saying “Mother” made me smile, particularly when it speeded up and I felt like I was being chased! The aforementioned lights were in a room with other works and I liked it better in that context as it meant things, in the case a wall of broccoli prints and a video with two dogs on, appeared and disappeared or blended into the gloom.

I found the whole exhibition an element of ‘the take it or leave it’. If there was something you did find nonsense, I didn’t get the pile of cardboard boxes and never found the Blu-Tack, just walk on and you’ll find something else to make you smile, like a car on a terrace which some on and opens its doors of its own accord.

Any show which makes the lift an art work must be OK! And of course I have to mention Orson and Sparky, the Gilbert and George of the dog world!

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