From 30th July–31st October 2010, The Fruitmarket Gallery present Martin Creed – Down Over Up as part of the 2010 Edinburgh Art Festival Exhibition. A major exhibition of new and recent work by Martin Creed, one of Britain’s most highly-regarded and popular artists.
Creed’s work captures the public imagination, while also attracting critical acclaim for its generous, accessible approach. His work most often takes the form of interventions into a given space, re-ordering readily available materials which are a familiar part of everyday life. In 2001, he won the Turner Prize with Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off, and in 2008 responded to the prestigious Duveen Commission at Tate Britain with the phenomenally popular Work No. 850, in which runners sprinted through the space at 30-second intervals.
Consisting of recent and newly-commissioned work, this exhibition focuses on stacking and progression in size, height and tone – stacks of planks, chairs, tables, boxes, pieces of Lego, series of paintings, and works making use of the musical scale. Creed talks about the works in terms of a picture of growth; showing process, progress and things in movement.
A highlight of the exhibition is a new commission in which Creed turns the Gallery’s staircase into a synthesiser, with each step sounding a different note on the scale as the audience walks up or down.
The exhibition’s focus on progression – on going up and down steps – gives a context to a new permanent work of public sculpture commissioned by The Fruitmarket Gallery and supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund for Edinburgh Art Festival 2010. Due to open later in the year, this ambitious project is sited on the Scotsman Steps, which link Edinburgh’s Old Town and New Town. Creed plans to resurface the Steps with different and contrasting marbles from all over the world, creating a visually spectacular, beautiful and thoughtful response to this historic artery. Creed describes the new staircase as a microcosm of the whole world – stepping on the different marble steps will be like walking through the world, dramatising Edinburgh’s internationalism and contemporary significance whilst also recognising and respecting its historical importance.
To coincide with Martin Creed’s exhibition, Sadler’s Wells and The Fruitmarket Gallery will also be presenting Creed’s ballet, Work No. 1020 at the Traverse Theatre on 7th, 8th and from 10th–15th August, as part of the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Combining dancers, a live band, art and the artist, this is a funny and thoughtful work by Creed. Based around the five positions in ballet and the notes of the musical scale, the ballet speaks eloquently to the incremental impulses at play in Creed’s work; the ordering and re-ordering of the everyday which gives his work its particular magic.
The Fruitmarket Gallery 45 Market Street Edinburgh EH1 1DF
Email: info@fruitmarket.co.uk
Martin Creed:Works Introduction by Martin Creed
Publication date: 30th July 2010 Price: £36.00 Hardback ISBN 9780500093535
Martin Creed: Works presents the first comprehensive survey of the work and career of Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed. The book features a foreword by the artist and accompanying texts by writers including, Colm Tóibín, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Massimiliano Gioni and Darian Leader.
Always in search of the essential nature of things, Creed uses the simplest materials to create a world in which reality appears transformed by conceptual rules, as well as by the unexpected breaking of those rules. His work is simultaneously subtle and spectacular, austere and playful – whether it be a sheet of paper crumpled into a ball, a protrusion from the wall, a door opening and closing, the lights going on and off, or a soundtrack inside a moving lift.
Renowned for his straightforward approach to making art and his deft economy of means, Creed has produced sculptures, installations, drawings, films, performances, music and text, each of which has found its inspiration in the objects and activities of everyday life. Martin Creed:Works includes renowned pieces such as Work No. 227: The lights going on and off and Work No. 850, which involved a runner sprinting through the galleries of Tate Britain.
This extensive volume documents almost 600 works produced over twenty years, each one selected by the artist himself. The book also includes an exhibition history, bibliography and biography.
Published by Thames & Hudson
