A R T // Martin Creed, what's the point of it?

Last weekend I finally got a chance to visit Martin Creed exhibition at the Hayward gallery! It’s one of those exhibitions I’d been itching to get too since it opened, but  wanted to share the experience with a friend instead of facing it alone..Luckily for me, Michaela was lovely enough to agree to come with, so we took advantage of all the good weather and spent the day milling around southbank eating good food and soaking up the sunshine!

It was by far the best exhibition I’ve been to recently, and was everything I expected from Martin Creed; interactive, precise and surprising. I'm usually feel very at home around art- it feels comfortable and familiar. This exhibition however was quite the opposite. With the use of unexpected speakers places around the building (even outside the toilets), the awkward sound of coughing, creaking and laughter followed you everywhere until you finally escaped outside onto the roof terrace. The use of the piano player on the ground floor was another added feature that successfully creeped me out, and I was glad to get away from his random intervals of slowly played scales.

However, my favourite (and admittedly one of the main reasons for going), was work no. 200, Half the air in a given space. What is essentially a room full of 7,000 white balloons, this interactive installation was created to convey the idea of ‘visible’ air. By measuring and capturing exactly half of the rooms air inside the balloons, Creed creates a feeling of claustrophobia whilst at the same time altering our perspective of space.

Considering you have to squeeze yourself through small gap in a glass wall into what is essentially another wall of balloons, you’d have thought (being afraid of small spaces and a lack of air), that I’d have crumpled into a trembling heap on the floor. Surprisingly it was quite the opposite. I wondered whether it would have been different if say the balloons had been of various colours, or the room been darker. However, as everything was white, clear and light, that panicking feeling of entrapment didn’t surface at all! It may also have had something to do with the amount of fun we had in there- I felt such a sense of freedom (a little like running through the ball pond as a child). Despite sharing the space with a few others, it was so tightly packed with balloons that we rarely bumped into anyone else. The only reminders that we were with company were the squeals of excitement and occasional bang of a popped balloon.

If you are thinking of visiting before it ends (the 5^th of May, so get booking tickets now), then be prepared for a lot of crazy static hair, and I strongly advise packing a hairbrush(which sadly I forgot so had to endure electrocuted hair for the rest of the day)!
We finished the day with chickpea flatbreads from the food stalls outside, followed by mint icecream and a sun bathe across the river at Victoria Embankment gardens- definitly one of the lovliest days I've had in a long time :)