General impressions:
- Some of the humour is intriguing and subtle because it is wordless (e.g. his strange self-portrait, the alteration of the standard gallery space through metronome noises and the oddly placed sofa), but other times words actually help to express humour in subtle manner (e.g. the large spinning sign reading "MOTHERS" - it creates the impression of mothers being large, imposing and slightly strange without illustrating that point in an obvious and literal way).
- The atmosphere is made humorous and bizarre; a familiar gallery space is transformed by a repetitive, unsettling metronome noises as mentioned above (this was particularly unsettling for me as while these were deliberately set at different speeds to be more annoying, in the past one metronome has proved to be enough to annoy me to the point where I had to throw it against my bedroom wall), a large spinning sign that prevented people from being able to use the ramp (and despite it being high enough that people several heads taller than me were able to walk under it, it still made me want to duck), neon lights, and pieces that altered the wall's surface.
- Sometimes words are not directly included in the piece, but the title is important (e.g. "A Large Piece of Furniture Partially Obstructing a Door"). Titles can be a good way of incorporating text that feels relevant or useful without falling into the trap of using text within the piece when it feels necessary but in practice looks out of place or distracting.
- Some work (e.g. "A Sheet of Paper Crumpled Into a Ball") seems to be a parody of the art world, and fits with the "Emperor's New Clothes" idea I was writing about earlier. I had an art teacher in school who said that he worked in the Tate Britain a few years ago, and enjoyed preying on visitors viewing "The Lights Going On and Off." He said that a lot of people didn't know what they were looking at, so he'd crumple up a piece of paper and throw it in the middle of the room, and after a while people would gather to look at it, which was his cue to walk in, apologise for littering (or something) and take the paper away. He'd laugh at them for being pretentious and not being able to tell litter from "art," but isn't this what we do when studying art? We take a leap of faith and we examine and try to analyse work, whether we think it looks like thoughtless, accidental trash or not. Plus not all of Martin Creed's work is on a plinth - are they really idiots for thinking that "A Sheet of Paper Crumpled Into a Ball" and "The Lights Going On and Off" were being combined? Were they supposed to be able to say, "Hey, that's most definitely a different sheet of paper crumpled into a ball! This is a strange, unfamiliar sheet of paper crumpled into a ball!"? Isn't it more pretentious to expect that? But then again, maybe we should be questioning the leap of faith we take.
- Some pieces use bodily functions in a way that can be slightly difficult to watch. This made me wonder if crudeness was deliberately being used for humour and to rebel against the serious nature of some art, or if the work was questioning our disgust for natural bodily functions. Maybe it was not the latter, but I was reminded of Patricia Piccinini, whose abstract forms which use realistic hair and skin textures can really make you notice the disgust that can be triggered by the natural human body.
- Work such as "As Many 2.5cm Squares as are Necessary Cut From 2.5cm Elastoplast Tape and Piled Up, Adhesive Sides Down, to Form a 2.5cm Cubic Stack" seems to acknowledge futility and does not aim to represent much other than what it literally, physically is. This was interesting to me, as I have made and am currently making some work which is about futility, and I am questioning the goal of creating or conveying deeper meaning through art (putting it that way makes me think of Frank Stella, whose work I very much dislike, but probably simply because I find rooms filled with his work to feel draining and dull).
- I thought that the sign on one of the works which read, "Please keep your distance from this artwork at all times," would make a good piece.
- I found it refreshing that a lot of emphasis seemed to be on happiness, humour and breaking down the serious and cold gallery atmosphere.
