Martin Creed: What's the point of it? Hayward Gallery - Monday 17th February.

1. Martin Creed: What's the point of it? Hayward Gallery - Monday 17th February.

I remember going to an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery two or three years ago which was billed as child friendly and coming away feeling that they had been absolutely genuine and correct about the show's non-adult audience's potential enjoyment.  My kids ran amok enjoying colours, mirrors and interactive installations.  No one told them not to.  Visitors were also encouraged to take photographs and upload them online when they returned home.  In retrospect I really appreciate the continued invitation to interact even after we'd left the space.  It was so refreshing to go to an exhibition that was so incredibly inviting and fun.

Martin Creed's exhibition was billed as child appropriate too.  So, it was a bit disappointing to hear five little boys, aged between 2 and 9, being told not to run or shout before they'd even entered the space. Perhaps the woman tearing our tickets had spotted and recognised my friend and I, along with our brood as “out of control mothers with feral kids” in the foyer, waiting to buy tickets while we, a little desperately and ineffectually, tried to keep them all together and reasonably behaved - perhaps they'd engaged in a type of art-sensitive profiling system.  I'm not sure what that message did to the kids - but most likely it made them want to run and shout, however, it immediately put both my friend and I on edge. Oh, no, really?  They can't run or shout?  How is that child friendly?  And why then would you give them the idea that they might anyway???

Children respond instinctively to the world around them and if you place them in an art gallery with work that is designed to provoke reactions then theirs' can sometimes be immediate and visceral, so shouting and screaming seemed pretty likely.  (My oldest suddenly and uncharacteristically took his trousers down when he was two years old as we meandered through a series of Giocometti sculptures and paintings at Tate Modern - incidentally I only know about this artist because I owned a cheap print of his for a time.)

So, we entered and of course the five children scattered with whoops and squeals of delight.  A massive wooden MOTHERS sign whooshed dangerously close to our heads as it spun round above us at variable speeds “so that it seems dangerously out of control” (there is a height limit and you cannot enter if over 6’6” and even though I'm quite a small person it felt horribly precarious). 

As my eyes darted about trying to spot each of my own children, feeling like I might be hit over the head any minute, I became aware of my friend tapping me on the shoulder.  It all happened very quickly but she pointed to a tall man in trendy jeans, wearing converse shoes, and bright blue rubber gloves as he swooped in like some sort of art-student/SAS/curator swat team guy and grabbed my youngest, just 23 months old, saying through gritted teeth, “get him out of there!”.  The toddler had slipped under some ropes that marked out the space around a painting, which he was far too short to have reached - but the lanky curator bravely grabbed him as if her were an explosive object before depositing him safely on the right side of the rope, rendering his explosive qualities safe.  And I, a bundle of embarrassed nerves by now, quickly made a decision not to get my note book out which I'd sort of hoped to do in a kind of conciliatory gesture to myself for having to cancel the actual study visit I'd been booked on with OCA to the SAATCHI gallery at end of the week.   Phew.  Great start. 

Remembering to breath, eyes darting even more energetically between children now, we went on.  I was alarmed by the site of a tower of cardboard boxes and immediately went straight to the toddler to steer him away.  I caught the eye of the security guard keeping a close eye on my middle son and was relieved to see him spellbound by two televisions on top of each other showing different focal lengths of the same scene. “Creepy,” he pronounced. Wow, they really will watch anything and thank goodness too - he seemed happier and calmer.  I relaxed to see my eldest and his friend standing together discussing some work or other I didn't have the time or head space to appreciate.

But this settled moment didn't last.  We went up some stairs and I gulped in horror at the incredibly skinny, tall and fragile looking tower of Lego that stood precariously without any protective rope, not that that would have meant anything to the youngest - but still.  Martin Creed had been sent this Lego and asked to create something with it.  He stuck it all together in a tower.  I like the gesture.  I'm not sure what it's meant to achieve as a work of art but it terrified me - imagine the shame of witnessing one's own child destroying a work of art in a highly regarded gallery! The sooner we left the room the better.

But that wasn't to be.  Because there was a huge white wall.  I think I'm right in thinking this is known as Work no. 670.  Creed numbers his works rather than names them - he sees this as the most democratic solution to his work as no status is bestowed on individual projects no matter how big or small.  He started doing this after he became unhappy with his titles.

In Work no. 670 a projection would intermittently switch on and off shining a bright light at a large wall and occasionally some filmed action, sometimes two dogs, would cross the wall.  Shadows were formed by anyone who cared to stand in front of the wall.  The kids, not only mine, but lots of kids loved it.  The toddler was ecstatic with the dogs.  My children didn't want to leave, they loved it so much.  I watched them.  I watched the Lego tower.  I watched them enjoying themselves and began to enjoy seeing them have fun.  I watched for the art student/SAS swat/curator guy.  I watched them screaming and dancing. I watched the security people watching them.  I watched the Lego tower.  I watched the other visitors enjoying seeing children enjoying themselves.  And I watched the Lego Tower.

Then my toddler noticed a collection of balls.  “My ball!”, he announced.  There was a rope around the balls.  I think he may have understood the meaning of the rope by now because he did listen when I said "no!" - they do need socialising and I guess his earlier experience may have had some impact.  Still, time to leave that level.  Why, oh, why was it so necessary to go past the Lego Tower?

But we did.  We made it upstairs.  The Lego Tower was left intact.  But toddler-boy was devastated he couldn't touch the line of cacti.  Happily he was consoled by the huge brick wall Martin Creed had constructed outside, Work no. 1812, on the sculptural terrace.  They all loved it.  A simple brick wall where they all wanted to play for ages, hiding and running round and round and round like dogs chasing their tales.  It was a shame the toddler fell off a bench and landed on his head but the moment diverted a possible impasse.  We adults were cold, the boys wanted to play by the wall forever now.  A room full of balloons beckoned though and was enough to get everyone inside again.

We queued, some with excitement, some with boredom, some with trepidation. I felt quite smug.  I didn't dread it all. I'm quite proud of my new self, a self that no longer suffers with crippling anxiety (a whole other story).  My friend can at times be rather dismissive and sneering about anxiousness.  Yet she was not entirely sure she'd feel very comfortable with the balloons and I even rather blithely offered to take her little one in, which I'm pleased to say, she refused, before swallowing hard and going in too.

She was right.  I was wrong! It was horrible in there.  A room filled with white balloons from floor to ceiling.  There is no way to find your bearings, and the sense of panic was immediate.  My middle child let go of my hand.  I felt I might lose him in there.  The balloons, being static, were covered in stray random hairs - and that's the stuff we could see.  It was unpleasant.  Unsettling.  Horrible.  We didn't last long.  Panic escalating, we made our way about two inches in and then out again.  The boys were really cross and wanted to stay but we could at least promise them a car out on another terrace, so they came.  Thankfully. 

It's interesting to note how shallow the panic and anxiety I feel I've said goodbye to for now lurks. How it rises up again in a situation where I felt utterly out of control and blinded, threatened, a sense that my children may be threatened.   I imagine this is one of Creed's aims.  He literally packages the air around you by placing it in balloons.  It's 'both playful and claustrophobic', I guess depending on age and your own mental/emotional place.

We adults got to sit down outside, a brief respite following the mild panic we felt with the balloons, with Work no. 1686, but it was hardly relaxing.  A car that kept coming alive, doors and boot flapping open, alarm screaming was loved by children, then shortly afterwards ignored by them as they played.  Adults all around, even ones who knew it would happen, kept getting a fright every time the alarm started. 

As we left we had to go under the big Mother sign again.  Creed says “when you're small, your mother is always big.  So it seemed like a good reason for this to be big and ... scary”.  Perhaps he wasn't fond of his own mother which is why he's made this exhibition, advertised it as child friendly, which it is, but told the children not to run and scream once inside.  That makes it not very mother friendly in the slightest.  Not to this mother at any rate.  I felt a bit like some sort of art project myself, “out of control mother with feral kids" by the end of it.  Frazzled, a bag of nerves, scary and really, quite out of control indeed!  Perhaps that's what being a mother is.  To be honest, that is generally how I feel after a day out with them all anywhere.   Or a day in for that matter.

There was much I didn't see.  And I am no clearer about the answer to his title question or if he attempts to answer it, “What's the point of it?” In fact, this is a question that has been on my mind since someone I know said they didn't see the point of my photos.  I have to say I think it's a facile question.  Maybe Creed does too and that's his point.  Because what really is the point of anything?  What is the point of going out to dinner, having candles on the table (actually, there are those from cultures where electricity isn't the norm who do think that's just weird), taking photographs, making art, enjoying art, not enjoying art.  What is the point in anything beyond the most basic activities we need to do in order to survive. Except, of course we do need these activities in order to survive, to remain human, and that's the point too.  Whilst we have consciousness and time, asking what is the point is really rather pointless. 

The kids enjoyed it.  I looked forward to a glass of wine at the nearby Pizza Express (40% off with your NUS card by the way).  And felt almost relaxed in my role of “out of control mother with feral kids” for a little while.

Martin Creed's website and a review of his show here:

http://www.martincreed.com/
Guardian Review of What's the point of it?