A Ford Focus on a rooftop suddenly starts up, the doors open, the the lights flash and the radio plays; a white piano suddenly starts playing; you fight your way to daylight through a room of white balloons and then fight back to the exit following the signs on the ceiling.  Adrian Searle in the Guardian calls this exhibition of the work of Martin Creed one of the best shows he’s seen at the Hayward Gallery.

The variety is breath-taking, from a huge sign “Mothers” which circles above you, just low enough that you feel it will take your head off, to parts of the gallery itself which have been reconstructed as art. As Searle says “His art is a repeated exercise in object relations. There is no hierarchy of materials or genres. Everywhere there are things on top of other things: tables, chairs, diminishing lengths of I-beam steel, brushstrokes, cardboard boxes. Things lined up (a row of cacti, ordered by height), things next to each other (a cluster of balls from ping-pong, billiards, rugby, cricket, baseball and American football, like a sports solar system), things that stick out of the wall, and things that probably shouldn’t be here at all.”

Creed controversially won the 2001 Turner Prize by creating an empty space in which the light turned on and off.  Creed’s art is imaginative, serious and fun at the same time.  Only Creed would provide and leaflet which is an A to Z of the exhibits.  C is for “Car” and for “Conceptual Art”.  He says “I do not believe in conceptual art. I don’t know what it is. I can’t separate ideas from feelings…Work comes from feelings and goes towards or ends up as feelings. It is a feeling sandwich, with ideas in the middle.

The exhibition has been extended by two weeks until the 11th of May; it is not to be missed!