Discovering “art” at Martin Creed’s Southbank exhibition

What on earth is going on at the Hayward Gallery?

As I walked into the exhibition, I ducked my head to avoid a giant rotating beam that was spinning at just above head height. On top were giant neon letters spelling out the word “MOTHERS”. Around the edge of the room there were a fuckload of metronomes ticking, for some reason.

It was at this point in the Martin Creed exhibition at the Hayward Gallery that I remembered that I don’t really understand art.

In the corner of the room was a display case containing nothing but a crumbled ball of paper. “Crumpled Paper, 2003" the caption read.

This probably shouldn’t have been too surprising given Creed’s previous work has included a lightbulb going on and off — which apparently won the Turner Prize.

I’ve long thought that I didn’t ‘get’ modern art — “I like thing that look like things”, I’d tell people. But this view was challenged only last week when I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Whilst mercifully lacking a takeover by Alain de Botton, it made me despair in another way: apart from the lack of most of the hits (Sunflowers, Starry Night et al were to be found elsewhere), most of it was pretty dull. It was when I found myself looking at a painting of some onions, I found myself thinking: “This is just a bunch of onions”. So maybe I did want something more from art. But I’m not sure the Martin Creed exhibition was quite it.

In the next room there was a bunch of old boxes piled up. Is this what an art looks like? What about the stack of Lego? What about the pile of different sports balls? There (surprisingly!) wasn’t an old lawnmower with a broken motor or some old tins of emulsion, otherwise I’d have assumed Creed was just clearing out his shed.

There was a piano at the side — and there was a sad looking man sat on the stool. Was he part of the art or just a punter? Maybe this is what the exhibition was supposed to do: maybe we were the exhibits and the stupid shit on the walls were the people looking at it? Maybe Creed was sat in the control room, like the creator in The Truman Show observing us mere peasants as our minds boggle with confusion at his genius?

After passing the toilet paper pyramid and the door that opens and closes on its own we reached the thing we were there to see: a room that had been filled with balloons. 20 people at a time were allowed in to experience what it felt like in a room that was floor to ceiling balloons. It was weirdly reminiscent of going swimming at they bobbed about and the movement of others sent waves of balloons off in different directions. It was great fun — and a strange experience.

I still didn’t really see the artistic value. Why was this stuff “art”?

But then it hit me. The exhibition was called “What’s the point of it?”. Had Creed been playing us all along? Was that whole point for us to question what constitutes art? Was the fact I was having a subjective experience provoked by objects in a deliberate context in fact the definition of art? Was the theme of organising different objects by size that ran throughout in fact in a subtle satire on how as a society we value ‘order’ over ‘art’? Oh god… was I appreciating modern art? Was this it? Was this the epiphany moment?

On the way out, just before you enter the gift shop you’re taken into a darkened room and projected on to the screen is a video of a woman taking a shit and walking away. After an uncomfortably long pause with just the turd on screen, another woman enters the frame and is sick. I didn’t stay to see what happens next.

So was it art? I’ve got no idea.