Blink and you'll miss it

11 April 2012

A completely empty room in which the lights turn on and then off every five seconds seems likely to become the most controversial item in this year's Turner Prize exhibition, which opens to the public tomorrow at Tate Britain.

Martin Creed's Work #227: The Lights going on and off, is exactly what it says it is - but is it art?

Certainly, not everyone was convinced at today's press preview of the show. One unidentified man stormed out in disgust when assured by Tate Britain's curator of communications, Simon Wilson, that it is indeed art.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Mr Wilson said: "One year we have dirty knickers on show and people complain about that - and then when you have something as pure and spiritual as this they they do too."

Martin Creed is one of four male artists - none of them painters - shortlisted for the high-profile contemporary art prize. Madonna will present the winner with the £20,000 prize at a ceremony on 9 December.

Creed - whose other work has included a one-inch tube of masking tape stuck to a wall, a ball of Blu-Tack and a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball - is doubtless a difficult artist to explain, but Mr Wilson made a valiant effort.

"Creed has said we live in a world full of objects, it's full of objects and we are surrounded by them," said Mr Wilson. "He wants to make art that doesn't contribute to that clutter. He wants to make art where he is doing as little as possible that is consistent with doing something."

Again, looking around Creeds empty, sometimes light, sometimes dark, work of art, Mr Wilson added: "Life is like that. One minute the light is on and then it is off.

It is emblematic of mortality, for me."

Former film director Isaac Julien's two video installations, The Long Road to Mazatlan and Vagabondia are less provocative than Creed's contribution.

The third artist on the shortlist, Richard Billingham, has received much attention for his painfully sharp photographs of his impoverished parents in their Midlands housing estate flat.

In this show Billingham has branched out with two video projections as well as photographs, one a video projection of a man smoking backwards, the other a film of his alcoholic father, Ray, lying in bed.

Mr Wilson said: "The extension of his vision of his family into video is one of the reasons the jury chose him this year."

Mike Nelson's installation, entitled The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent - is far less soothing: in fact one of the Turner Prize judges earlier this year described the Loughborough-born conceptual artist's work as "creepy".

Another heckler, Edna Weiss, took offence at Mr Wilson's enthusiasm for Nelson's work - an interconnected labyrinth of corridors, side rooms, and store rooms littered with odd industrial equipment, buckets and boards - which, as Mr Wilson said, look not unlike the Tate's own storerooms. "Why is it a work of art?," Ms Weiss asked Mr Wilson, adding: "The Tate store room isn't a work of art, so why is this a work of art?" She too then left.

Later Mr Wilson, who has been involved with the annual exhibition for a decade now, said: "We are showing what the jury considers to be the best contemporary British art of the year to a far wider public than would normally see it. I absolutely accept that every year we have to help explain why this is art."

Blink and you'll miss it

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