Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you: First Thursdays – a new East End art innitiaive conjured up by the Whitechapel art gallery and Parasol Unit. Fully supported by those good fellows at Time Out, First Thursdays asks, simply, that the multitude of galleries that populate this bizarre cultural nub we call the East, stay open until 9pm – allowing, presumably, the hard working folk of London to saunter up after hours and check out the abundance of wonderful art the scene has to offer.
By 8pm, the well-worn tributary of Redchurch St – home to Museum 52 and other assorted spaces – was like the Circus Maximus. Thronging crowds, heading either to or from the opening of Martin Creed’s exhibition at Hauser and Wirth’s Coppermill space flowing down the road biblically.
Right, I think… I shall go to the Coppermill and review Creed’s show.
This plan is immediately thwarted. An ebbing, thronging multitude of young and old art tarts has formed, not a queue, but a bolus like human assemblage at the entry. The bolus swells and boils, some voices are raised … some tempers are flared. I should have known really. Upon my arrival I noticed that the railings of Cheshire Street were smeared with loads of pushbike action: the sure litmus test of a successful East End art event being the cycle tally.
I retire. I’m not going to bother. I shall return ‘semi-triumphantly’ in the morn and have the spread to myself. Yes, I shall review Creed in the morning.
I return in the morning (lunchtime). As expected the place is empty if only for the occasional whiff of spilt beer and pantomime left over form the previous night
As I saunter towards the entry to the main exhibition space (a cavernous, soon to be reclaimed, warehouse) the words of a lady friend of mine (who’s name, for dignity’s sake will remain undisclosed) uttered the night before at the post First Thursdays event at Bistroteque, rang clear. Upon my issuing of a series of reasonable inquiries about the show, she announced in response to my questioning – “It’s got a projection of the most beautiful cock”.
Really …
At the time I recall ignoring the desire to inquire as to what criteria she was applying to her aesthetic analysis of the cock in question, I remember thinking, oh well, I’ll see for myself, make my own mind up as to whether it is beautiful or not.
Right on cue, upon entering the space, I notice a giant cock. It’s alright. Not bad. Beautiful? Not sure, perhaps I should leave that to the Ladies. In crisp black and white the cock is rhythmically entering a woman from behind; for just over four minutes this hypnotic operation is performed. Accompanying the film, in the far corner of the large warehouse space, a rather stern looking pianist (not penis) slowly plays an escalating scale on a rather ropey looking piano.
As I later find out, the previous night had featured a comically arranged orchestra playing similar ascending scales. Not today. Today we only have the piano and girl for company. Looking around, the scene is the usual Spartan field we have come to associate with Creed’s work. A collection of seemingly divorced objects sit together awkwardly; a large sculpture made from industrial planks, a Serra-meets-Morris type bit of metal, some nails, some paintings – both figurative (a girls face) and abstract (diagonal lines as usual) – and a neon-sign that turns on and off (as do the warehouse lights after each four odd minute film screening – remember the Turner Prize?).
All in all, well… it’s stylish isn’t it, it looks good. Rather than heralding the return of a pure aesthetic to the sparse sphere of his remarkably well-received super-post-minimal art, I rather feel that Creed is the arch constructor of delightful, enchanting even, pools of entirely numb, insubstantial and vapid non-conceptuality (concepts create, among many other things, ‘meanings’, this does not) that simply feel right. Maybe this is the point, maybe not. I’m not sure I care, because I’m off for a beigel.
Categories ,abstract, ,exhibition, ,Martin Creed
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