Martin Creed

Martin Creed (born 1968) is a British artist and musician. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work “No. 227: the lights going on and off”, which was an empty room in which the lights went on and off.

Martin Creed was born in Wakefield and brought up in Glasgow. He studied art at the Slade School of Art in University College, London from 1986 to 1990. Since 1987, Creed has numbered each of his works, and most of his titles relate in a very direct way to the piece’s substance. Work No. 79, some Blu-tack kneaded, rolled into a ball and depressed against a wall (1993), for example, is just what it sounds like, as is Work No. 88, a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball (1994). One of Creed’s best known works is Work No. 200, half the air in a given space (1998), which is a room with enough inflated balloons in it for them to contain half the air in it. Perhaps Creed’s best known piece among the general public is the work he exhibited for the 2001 Turner Prize show at the Tate Gallery, Work No. 227, the lights going on and off. This was an empty room in which the lights periodically switched on and off. As so often with the Turner Prize, this created a great deal of press attention, most of it questioning whether something as minimalist as this could be considered art at all. Artist Jacqueline Crofton threw eggs at the walls of the room containing Creed’s work as a protest. Creed won the prize. Creed formed a band, Owada, in 1994. In 1997 they released their first CD, Nothing, on David Cunningham’s Piano label.