An electrifying gesture

Adrian Searle
Tuesday July 1, 2008
The Guardian

I am certain someone has already computed the accumulated distance that will be achieved between now and November by Martin Creed’s runners in Tate Britain in terms of circumnavigations of the planet, the hours run and the energy expended. But this is no laboratory test rat-run or competitive race.

The great thing about Creed’s Work No 850 is that it is gloriously pointless, a repeated explosion of vitality, a sort of extension of Paul Klee’s definition of drawing as “taking a line for a walk”…

For those who don’t know, uber-conceptualist art darling Martin Creed has just “installed” a new “work”: a person running through a gallery at the Tate Britain. This above is a “review” of the “work”.

Adrin Searle, who are you that you can actually sit down at your laptop and write something about this … this manifestation? I’m not even going to criticize you Adrian or you, Martin, since you reveal yourselves utterly by this. You don’t provoke debate. To debate, both sides must have a point to make. You don’t make us think.

“And those who are about to fall will not take warning from the example of those who have fallen, but nothing can be done about it. All will fall.”

Goya, Los Caprichos