Students win UK art 'first'
20 September 2012
Turner Prize winner's work brought to MMU
STUDENTS from the School of Art’s MA in Contemporary Curating have secured the first UK showing of Turner Prize winner Martin Creed’s Work no. 268: Half the air in a given space.
The work will be displayed in the Pavement gallery, a former drapery store that makes up part of Righton, from September 21st to November 1st, with a preview on the evening of September 20th.
The Pavement gallery is run as part of the MA course, and is curated by research fellow Steven Gartside.
Work no. 268 will transform the tiny gallery, which is potentially the smallest in the country, by filling the space with black balloons which are inflated to occupy half the air in the room, therefore converting this normally invisible measurement into a perceptible form.
“On display”
It will be available to view through the glass window on the outside of the gallery around the clock, and visitors will also be able to enter and walk through the balloons themselves between 2pm and 6pm on Fridays.
However only two visitors will be allowed to enter at any one time.
Gallery co-ordinator Zoe Watson said: “The work emphasises the idea of display; viewers put themselves on display by entering into the space, which originally functioned as a shop window.”
Work no. 268 was last seen at the Yokohama Museum, in Japan.
Olympic work
Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001 with his installation Work no. 227: The lights going on and off.
As part of his London 2012 festival project, in Work no. 1197 All the Bells, he invited everyone in the UK to ring a bell at 8.12am on 27 July 2012, the day of the Olympic opening ceremony.
