WORK NO.

227: THE LIGHTS GOING ON AND OFF

We all have our bad days, when you just can't get it right, like moments of loss and

surrender. And we all have our good days, when everything seems to run smoothly, just

perfect for no apparent reason. I can see clearly now the rain has gone. You wake up, things

are okay, and the sun is shining. And then out of the blue, there you go again, down into the

dark pit of depression. It's not just a matter of mood swings. Its something more basic and

perverse: the inability to preserve joy. The need to measure it against a black background.

Art is no different. It’s a ride on the roller coaster of emotions. Sometimes I feel so happy,

sometimes I feel so sad. I always thought Martin Creed's Work No. 227: The lights going on

and off had something to do with this simple truth. It has the ability to compress happiness

and anxiety within one single gesture. Lights go on, lights go off – sunshine and rain, and

then back to beginning to repeat endlessly. I do not know what Creed was thinking about

when he made it but to me it always looked like a swing, a mood swing. That's why I never

found it funny but frightening in its simplicity, it's a sculpture for our lithium oriented,

Prozac enhanced reality. Are we afraid of the dark or just blinded by the light? I see a

rainbow and I want to paint it black.

Maurizio Cattelan, 2004

Martin Creed’s Work No. 227 (TATE.org)

Martin Creed’s Work No. 227: The lights going on and off consists of an empty room which

is filled with light for five seconds and then plunged into darkness for five seconds. This

pattern is repeated ad infinitum. In exploiting the existing light fittings of the gallery space,

Creed creates a new and unexpected effect. An empty room with lighting that seems to

be misbehaving itself confounds the viewer’s normal expectations. This work challenges

the traditional conventions of museum or gallery display and, consequently, the visiting

experience. Creed plays with the viewer’s sense of space and time and in so doing he

implicates and empowers the viewer, forcing an awareness of, and interaction with, the

physical actuality of the space. The work is simply titled ‘Work’ followed by a brief
description and a number which forms part of the artist’s ongoing system for titling and

cataloguing his work.

This work emerges from the artist’s ongoing series of investigations into commonplace

phenomena. His subtle interventions reintroduce the viewer to elements of the everyday.

Creed’s choice and use of materials – plain A4 sheets of paper, blu-tak, masking tape,

party balloons, simple or ‘unpoetic’ language as text or as lyrics to songs – is a thoughtful

celebration of the ordinary, a focused reading of the ambiguity of everyday stuff.

By identifying his works primarily through a numbering system, Creed accords them equal

status, regardless of size or material. He has said ‘I find that it’s difficult to choose, to

decide that one thing’s more important than the other ... So what I try and do is to choose

without having to make decisions.’ (Quoted in Buck 2000, p.111.) His idiosyncratic

approach is born out of this refusal to make decisions and a playful concern with the

conundrum of wanting both to make something and nothing: ‘the problem was to

attempt to establish, amongst other things, what material something could be, what

shape something could be, what size something could be, how something could be

constructed, how something could be situated … how many of something there could be,

or should be, if any, if at all.’ (Quoted in Virginia Button, The Turner Prize: Twenty Years,

London 2003, p.172.) His interrogation of his own motives reveals an anxiety about ‘making

something extra for the world’ (ibid.). The economy of means of Work No. 227 exemplifies

Creed’s attempts to make work with minimal physical intervention.

Further reading

Louisa Buck, ‘Martin Creed’, Artforum, vol.38, no.6, February 2000.

Martin Creed, exhibition catalogue, Ikon, Birmingham 2008, p.44.

Helen Delaney

May 2010
Jonathan Jones on Art (theguardian.com)

Martin Creed's light goes on and off for me

Tate has made its verdict on Martin Creed clear by buying his most notorious artwork – but is he a

really convincing artist?

So what do you get when you buy Martin Creed's Work No 227: The Lights Going On and Off,

which has just been acquired by the Tate? A light bulb and a switch?

No, stupid, you get an instruction. Creed's numbered works all come in the form of laconic scripts,

recipes for works of art that can then be created in different places and times by following his

simple proposals.

It's hardly surprising that his most notorious work – to borrow the words of Homer Simpson, it can

be described as "Light goes on. Light goes off" – has been bought by the Tate. It won him the

Turner prize at Tate Britain in 2001. Creed flicks all the right switches at Tate, a museum with a

history of championing minimalism that goes back to its controversial puchase of Carl Andre's

bricks in 1976. A display at Tate Modern once juxtaposed Creed's works with those of Andre,

making the connection explicit.

But is Creed a minimalist? Only in the same sense that he is a fluxus artist, a conceptual artist and

a dadaist. His instructions harp on all these themes of the 20th-century avant garde. Creed is a

fastidious re-enacter of the avant garde's history, a stylish retro-provocateur.

Myself, I find him a bit too stylish and a bit too consciously clever to be an absolutely convincing

artist. In fact, the lights go on and off when I think about him. One moment I am entranced by a

simple, eloquent Creed gesture, the next I am wondering if this is not all a bit … pretentious?

The lights go on: I find his permanent installation of a coloured marble staircase in Edinburgh's

Scotsman Steps a generous, modest masterpiece of contemporary public art. I am similarly moved

by his eerily optimistic neon statement Everything Is Going to Be Alright. When Creed makes

public art, he avoids pomposity, and expresses universal hopes and fears.

The lights go off: but what are those paintings of ziggurats that look like Italian art-movie posters

from the 1970s? And are we supposed to admire his music as genuine art-rock fluxus experiement,
or smile at the big joke? In the end, what is so profound about his fascination with numbers and

lists?

Creed is not a minimalist, he's a pasticheur of that and other modern movements. This can be

wearisome. But then suddenly he speaks clearly, and the light is good.