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Martin Creed's 'The People Running 'Round and 'Round'?

by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 at 9:59 PM

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We've got the big crack in the floor of the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall — Doris Salcedo's "Shibboleth." We've seen "State Britain," a replica of the tattered war protest in Parliament Square, snake through the Tate and win this year's Turner Prize for Mark Wallinger. And last week, we heard that the sculptor Antony Gormley plans to stand real people on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square 24 hours a day for a year, if he wins the space.

True to form in London, we now have the prospect of something equally, erm, innovative to fill the 300-foot-long Duveen galleries at Tate Britain. Martin Creed, who won the Turner Prize in 2001 for an exhibition containing nothing but flickering lights ("Work No. 227: The lights going on and off"), has been commissioned to fill the space. Sotheby's is sponsoring the commission. What Mr. Creed will fill the galleries with has not been disclosed, but it was claimed today that the artist plans to have people running through the space without cease. And that's it.

It wouldn't shock if this turns out to be true — his work is described as being about "nothing," even by admirers. Of course, "nothing" in the loftiest, most artistic sense of the word can really make you think. As Cheyenne Westphal of Sotheby's Contemporary Art department said of Mr. Creed: "What I love about him is that he makes you aware of the moment. The lights go on and off. You think, 'What is going on?,' not 'What am I going to cook for dinner?' He pulls you into the here and now."

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