Specially devised for the gallery’s annual Duveen Commissions, Creed’s art piece, called Work No. 850, will see a runner speed through Tate Britain’s dramatic neo-classical sculpture galleries, again and again, as if their life depended on it, every day for the next four months.
The piece, which Tate say is all about the simple ebb and flow of human nature, was devised following a visit to the catacombs of the Cappuccini monks in Palermo. Arriving just before closing time, Creed and his companions had only five minutes to run around the space taking in all the dead bodies displayed on the walls.
“I like running,” said Creed. “I like seeing people run and I like running myself… running is the opposite of being still.”
“If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it’s an example of aliveness.”
Creed has built up a reputation for playful and often challenging work. He famously won the Turner Prize 2001 with an exhibited piece called Work # 227: The lights going on and off, which centred around an empty gallery with the lights flashing on and off.
