| 19 July 2010
Controversial Turner Prize winner Martin Creed is looking forward to playing with your mind this festival.Arecent article in The Times elevated Martin Creed to the “pantheon of irritants” alongside Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Indeed, many people must have assumed the Scottish artist was some kind of art-world fraud after he won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No 227, The Lights Going On and Off, an installation that was exactly that: the lights going on and off. Today, however, Creed laughs at the idea.
“I don’t feel like an irritant, but I do think that if something gets under one’s skin, at least that’s something,” he says. “I like to give people pleasure, not pain, but working for me is a matter of trying to poke yourself to see if you can feel something.”
In truth, Creed’s ideas have a purity that captures people’s imaginations. His intentions are serious but, whether he is creating a room full of balloons, getting joggers to race around a gallery or displaying a neon sign telling us “Everything is going to be alright”, Creed is great fun. “I hope people enjoy my work and also find it entertaining, but I do it to help me to live,” he says. “For me, it’s more like looking for excitement, and excitement can come in many forms.”
Whatever way you approach the festivals this year, you’re sure to come across the 42-year-old artist. He is at the Traverse with his Ballet Work No 1020, and over the road in Festival Square, where the large-screen TV monitor will show a one-minute film of him trampling on flowers. At the Book Festival, he will launch Martin Creed: Works, the first comprehensive survey of his output, and at the Fruitmarket Gallery, he will present a major new show. If you wait long enough, you will also find him at The Scotsman steps where, in the autumn, he will be laying a permanent installation in marble.
“It’s amazing and I’m really happy about it,” he says. “I really like Edinburgh and I haven’t done much in Scotland, even though I grew up here.”
What links his various works in Edinburgh is the idea of stepping from one stage to the next. Whether it is his Traverse show in which the dance is based on the five ballet positions, or the Fruitmarket show where the staircase makes music when you tread on it, he is fascinated by the idea of incremental change. “A lot of the things I’ve made have got things going up and down,” he says. “It’s steps and staircases, building something up and building it down again. It’s to do with getting from one place to another. That’s what a scale is in music: it’s a way to get from one note to a higher or lower note, while understanding the route on the way. For me, it’s got to do with making my life more bearable. Having things divided into scales or steps is a comfort.”
Martin Creed: Down Over Up, Fruitmarket Gallery, 30 July – 31 October, daily 10am-7pm, Free, Tel: 0131 225 2383
Ballet Work No 1020, Traverse Theatre, 3, 7-8, 10-15 August, various times, From £17, Tel: 0131 228 1404
Martin Creed, Edinburgh International Book Festival, 16 August, 8.30pm, £10 (£8), Tel: 0845 373 5888
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