Martin Creed. Work No. 396, 2005; planks of wood; 102 x 482 x 29.5 cm. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Linda Nylind.

One framework that is readily apparent for all of Creed’s work at his major survey show at Hayward Gallery is a numbering system that he started using around 1991. Every work has a unique number assigned to it, but not every work receives a title. Whilst considering one of the large gallery walls covered with 1,000 multicolored imprints of broccoli on card, titled Work No. 1000: Broccoli Prints (2009-10), I considered the idea of frameworks and was reminded of a joke my wife’s grandmother used to tell frequently. In some ways, it works as a nice analogy for the moment one has when looking at Creed’s work. To paraphrase:

A woman walks into a grocery store and asks the clerk for some broccoli. The clerk responds that they’re fresh out of broccoli, but the woman refuses to yield on her request. After a bit of back-and-forth, the exasperated clerk offers:

Clerk: Ma’am, spell the “car” in carrot.

Woman: C-A-R.

C: Okay, now spell the “let” in lettuce.

W: L-E-T.

C:  Very good, now spell the “fuck” in broccoli.

W: [pause] There is no fuck in broccoli.

C: That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!

Martin Creed. Work No. 1000, 2009-10; various paints on card; installation view. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Linda Nylind.

Martin Creed. Work No. 1000, 2009-10 (detail); various paints on card; overall dimensions variable. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Linda Nylind.

The woman is of course a stand-in for the viewer who comes to the work with presuppositions, which leaves the artwork to play the role of the clerk—the voice of deadpan, punning logic. In this situation, there is a crisis moment, and a blunt conclusion occurs at the end of the exchange; a solution is presented through the obvious, and the viewer is left considering a joke that is a result of the framework. Work No. 1000 is necessarily an artwork made from 1,000 prints, because of its rank in the numbering system, and its title dictates its form. The part the viewer is then left to consider is the absurdity of making 1,000 imprints of a vegetable.

Martin Creed. Work No. 200: Half the Air in a Given Space, 1998 (detail); white balloons; multiple parts, each balloon 12 in./30.5 cm diameter; overall dimensions variable. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Anna Maltz.

In the early days of conceptual minimalism, it was considered frivolous to make a piece look good, and there certainly wasn’t much room for fun or humor. All effort was to be put into the formula through which a concept was to find resolution. Conceptually comprehensive systems can turn out to be overly didactic and eventually become stale. LeWitt—the grandmaster of closed-ended instructions—fully understood this dilemma and seemingly abandoned it for broad strokes of good-looking color. Creed has borrowed and learned from the best, yet he hasn’t prevented a conceptual strategy from having fun or looking good. Work No. 200: Half the Air in a Given Space (1998) is one of the most beautiful conceptual gestures that I’ve thought about or seen. The piece consists of a room with half the airspace taken up with white balloons. The viewer is allowed to enter and be engulfed by the piece. It is a perfectly distilled idea illustrated physically in a playful and beautiful way.

Martin Creed. Work No. 1588, 2013; iron beams. Courtesy of Hayward Gallery. Photo: Linda Nylind.

Creed’s work functions like a song with a good hook. There may be a moment when a piece isn’t fully understood, but there is no secret language to decode. If necessary, give it a bit of time and it will then be plainly obvious what the piece is attempting to do. Frank Stella famously said, “What you see is what you see.” What’s the Point of It? is an incredibly satisfying exhibition that presents the very best that Creed has to offer without hiding the blemishes. Considered as a whole, this comprehensive survey strikes the perfect balance of a super-smart conceptual practice with a sexy but justified veneer. What is evident is that Creed can have his “fuck in” broccoli and eat it too.

Martin Creed: What’s the Point of It? is on view at Hayward Gallery through April 27, 2014.

David Shrigley, Untitled, 2011. Courtesy of David Shrigley and Yvon Lambert. Untitled, 2011 Courtesy of David Shrigley and Yvon Lambert

When I first saw David Shrigley, I was taken aback by his calm aura and semblance of complete normalcy. A man known for his searing dead-pan humour, I half-expected to see a crazed post-punk artist living on the fringes of society. But here was a charming, clean-cut gentleman, tranquilly tattooing ink drawings onto willing participants in the middle of London’s most extravagant art fair.

Calm, cool and collected on the outside, seethingly acidic on the inside, Shrigley’s solo show at the Hayward Gallery, London, mirrors the state of the artist himself. Moving way beyond the drawings for which the artist is best known, Brain Activity includes Shrigley’s paintings, sculpture, installation, animation and photography – cracking open the artists’ cranium for us just a little bit.

I admire the brutal honestly in Shrigley’s work – he tells it exactly as it is, injecting humour and wit into the everyday with his veracious observations. His work is highly accessible – witnessed by the large number of children running around the exhibition – but never simply topical. Both referential and moralistic, Shrigley’s work extends far beyond the realm of cartoons, and is beginning to become an institutional staple.

Installation view of David Shrigley: Brain Activity at the Hayward Gallery, London. Photograph by Linda Nylind.

My personal favorite of the exhibition, the animation New Friends, jubilantly tells a story of conformity – what happens when a highly militaristic ‘square head’ falls down a rabbit hole to join the dance funk tunes of the ‘round heads’. As we learn, there is a price to be paid to have a bit of fun, and it might be part of your head.

The simple and satirical video, Lightswitch, pays homage to another British artist, Martin Creed, whose Work No. 227: the lights going on and off, won him the Turner Prize in 2001. While Creed’s work, in which the lights in the gallery simply turned on and off every five seconds, is austerically minimal, Shrigley’s is maniacally hilarious, as a long awkward finger has its fun playing games with a light switch. Hours of entertainment derived from the simplest of things.

Shrigley’s earliest works, photographs which document his fleeting urban interventions, have the same witticism embedded within them – a sign in the middle of the flowing water labelled ‘river for sale’, a tiny box reading ‘leisure centre’ in an empty site, and a posted notice seeking a lost mangy pigeon.

David Shrigley, Lost, 1996 Image © the artist and courtesy of the artist David Shrigley Lost, 1996, photograph. Image © the artist and courtesy of the artist .

In the room dedicated to the recurrent theme of ‘Death’, a taxidermied Jack Russell terrier holds a sign proclaiming his current state of existence – both a dryly accurate observation and a modern day pop vanitas, reminding us that we will all be dead one day.

Installation view of David Shrigley: Brain Activity at the Hayward Gallery, London. Photograph by Linda Nylind.

Here, and throughout all of his work, Shrigley’s observations about the human condition are spot on. I quite like the journey inside Shrigley’s brain and am happy to spend a bit of time there – there is something about his scathing honesty and dark humour that is refreshing, and simply feels good for the soul.

Mike Kelley's "Adaption: Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses" (1999/2010), photo by Alastair Muir, courtesy of Hayward Gallery

A life-size theatrical set with colorful objects ranging from a punching bag in the shape of a human form to a cylindrical bowl and a wire mesh are placed for visitors to play with. Titled Adaption: Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses (2010), artist Mike Kelley modeled the set after Harry Harlow’s primate laboratory, a psychologist who investigated the impact of bodily contact and isolation on aggression and affection in monkeys in the 1950s and 60s. The set is presented with two films, a black and white dance choreography by Anita Pace in the manner of Martha Graham’s mythological dance pieces, and a large color projection of a dance filmed in Kelley’s installation of the same work created in 1999, where dance movements were derived from the monkeys in the laboratory experiments, with violent movements evoking the films of psychologist Albert Bandura’s studies of the effect of televised violence of on children. Kelley’s practice is recognized for its engagement with popular culture by recontextualizing the subject of his work, in this case, the aura of psychological studies and its pervasive influence on contemporary culture. Coursing through the theatrical set of the film which was arranged to evoke Isamu Noguchi’s sculptural sets produced for Martha Graham, are four actors including performers wearing gorilla suits. The combination of the physical laboratory with a dance expressing ritualistic gestures, and the language of the lengthy title which contributes to a mythical allure, produce a rule system where art forms are related to each other through a common theme. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1951, Kelley received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and now resides in Los Angeles.

Pablo Bronstein's "Magnificent Triumphal Arch in Pompeian Colours" (2010), photo by Alastair Muir, courtesy of Hayward Gallery

Pablo Bronstein’s Magnificent Triumphal Arch in Pompeian Colours (2010) is a monumental arch set in the gallery and forms the setting for an visitor or a dancer at intervals during the day, whose everyday movements are transformed upon stepping through the arch, making a sprezzatura-inspired flourish.  Bronstein’s installations, performances and two-dimensional works explores notions of private and public, individual and collective, by combining the language of architecture and dance. The grandiose title of the neo-classicist styled work speaks to Bronstein’s interests in drawing on the ways in which the built environment exerts power and intervenes in our everyday behaviors and use of space. According to the guidelines in the exhibition, “while the dancer performs, visitors become bystanders and etiquette decrees that during that time, no one except the performer can set foot in the space”, and the way the visitors are guided to circulate is reminiscent of Bronstein’s earlier work, Concept for a Public Square (2005) where visitors could not step across, but had to skirt around a low wall demarcating an area of dead space. The imposition of the guidelines satirize the continuing nostalgia and reverence for architectural structures which exude a sense of authority and grandeur, and the ways the public or the ideal citizen conforms to these conventions. Bronstein was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and attended the Slade School of Fine Art and Goldsmiths in London, where he now lives.

Christian Jankowski's "Rooftop Routine" (2007), photo by Alastair Muir, courtesy of Hayward Gallery

On entering the second level of the exhibition, one is drawn towards lively music from a film, Rooftop Routine (2007) by Christian Jankowski. The video is of Chua Suat Ling, of New York City’s Chinatown, hula-hooping and setting off a chain of hula hoopers across twenty-five rooftops in the area. It was a formal gesture to Trisha Brown’s 1973 Roof Piece which tested the impact of distance on improvised movements and involved dancers dressed in red across half a mile of rooftops in downtown New York. In similar fashion, Rooftop Routine played on the limitations of the camera in capturing the sequences of all the movements in one shot, and viewers of the film are left to imagine the communal experience and the visual rhythms of the hula hoopers with their circular movements against the grid-like views of the city. The participants’ prominence in Jankowski’s works are emblematic of his process, where he collaborates with people from all walks of life, from fortune tellers and magicians to street performers. In this case, it was a chance glimpse of Chua Suat Ling’s daily hula hoop routine, which provided Jankowski with the inspiration for the piece. Jankowski’s performance-based works continue the spirit of the improvised nature of the dance movement from the 1960s and 70s, from its concept and process through to its eventual performance. Hula hoops are placed in front of the video, for visitors to practice or to follow the instructions given by the red-suited Chua Suat Ling on the screen. Jankowski was born in 1968 in Göttingen, Germany and is now based in Berlin. His recent solo exhibition, The Perfect Gallery, was held at Pump House Gallery, London.