Martin Creed (b.1968)
British Council Collection
British sculptor and installation artist. He was born in Wakefield, grew up in Scotland, and studied at the *Slade School of Art. His works are generally sparse in their material form and are identified only by numbers so as not to impose associations. (For this reason his numbering system avoids the portentous No. 1.) He is best known for the work for which he was awarded the *Turner Prize in 2002, Work no. 227 (2000, MoMA, New York). An entire room is alternately lit and darkened by electric light. It is a way of making a work of art which has no material existence: the light and the darkness are not themselves the art, only the change between them. This is a work which has entered the mythology of ‘modern art’ stories: the river boat guide tells the tourists (quite incorrectly) as they pass *Tate Modern: about the empty room inside with the single light bulb.
Text source: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press)
