Martin Creed, Work No. 850 2008. © The artist. Photo: Hugo Glendinning
Gallery goers at Tate Britain will be getting the run around from July 1 2008 when artist Martin Creed unveils his new artwork in the London institution's Duveen Galleries.
Specially devised for the gallery’s annual Duveen Commissions, Creed’s art piece, called Work No. 850, will see a runner speed through Tate Britain’s dramatic neo-classical sculpture galleries, again and again, as if their life depended on it, every day for the next four months.
The piece, which Tate say is all about the simple ebb and flow of human nature, was devised following a visit to the catacombs of the Cappuccini monks in Palermo. Arriving just before closing time, Creed and his companions had only five minutes to run around the space taking in all the dead bodies displayed on the walls.
“I like running,” said Creed. “I like seeing people run and I like running myself… 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.”
Creed has built up a reputation for playful and often challenging work. He famously won the Turner Prize 2001 with an exhibited piece called Work # 227: The lights going on and off, which centred around an empty gallery with the lights flashing on and off.
The new work extends Creed’s investigation into physical experience and everyday life and relates to his other works exploring basic human activity such as Work No. 503 (2006), which depicted vomiting and Work No. 600 (2006), which depicted defecating.
Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain said the gallery was ‘simply delighted’ with the new work.
“Martin Creed has responded to the historic Duveen gallery spaces with a compelling, simple and lyrical project,” he said. “In lifting an everyday activity out of its usual context and dropping it into the central galleries of Tate Britain, it upsets any preconceived ideas of how to move appropriately through an art space.”
Work No. 850 ‘runs’ from July 1 to November 16 2008.
