Paint! Lights! Action! How artist Martin Creed went crazy in the country

In an old barn in Somerset, a bunch of people are chucking paint about, and I’ve come along to join in.

Paint is going everywhere – on the walls, on the floor, on our clothes and faces. It feels like being a child again - I haven’t had so much fun in years.

In the midst of all this madness, a scrawny bloke in a paint-splattered suit is telling us what to do – well, sort of.

Mainly, he’s just telling us to let our hair down and enjoy ourselves.

Welcome to What You Find, the new one man show by Martin Creed. And welcome to Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Britain’s most exciting gallery.

Founded in Zurich in 1992, Hauser & Wirth is one of the world’s leading commercial galleries, with branches in London, New York and LA.

However its new Somerset branch, which opened in 2014, is more than a gallery - it’s a rendezvous.

Durslade Farm is hidden amid the rolling hills of England’s West Country. There are five sleek exhibition spaces, all housed in the farm’s old barns and stables.

When I arrive at Durslade, a few days before the opening, Creed is busy preparing for his first show here in Somerset.

He’s been living in the Maltings, a house just down the road, where the gallery put up artists, to give them time and space to think.

The exhibits he’s installed so far are typically eccentric, including piles of his household junk and even three of his own cars.

‘A lot of artists are trying to break the rules of life,’ Creed tells me, as we watch people of all ages hurling paint around these whitewashed walls.

‘Sometimes people get angry with artists, as if they’re criminals, duping people.’

Creed isn’t trying to dupe anyone, but he does see certain similarities between artists and criminals. I know what he means.

There is a connection, but there’s also an important difference. Criminals are trying to get something for nothing.

Artists are trying to create something out of nothing, and nobody knows the value of nothing better than Martin Creed.

Born in Wakefield in 1968 and raised in Glasgow, Creed makes films and music as well as paintings.

He’s renowned for his cryptic neon signs, but he made his name in 2001 when he won the Turner Prize for ‘The lights going on and off,’ an artwork which consisted of, er, the lights going on and off in an empty gallery.

His other works include ‘A sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball’ and ‘Some Blu-Tack kneaded, rolled into a ball, and depressed against a wall.’

Naturally, not everyone is a fan of this sort of thing. An artist was banned from the Tate galleries for life after throwing eggs at ‘The lights going on and off.’

Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak called Creed the worst Turner Prize winner of all time.

Such fierce critiques are understandable. A lot of Creed’s work (like his films of people vomiting and defecating) seems designed to rub people up the wrong way.

So is he just trying to wind us up? I don’t think so. His art divides audiences into fans and foes, but he seems utterly sincere.

A few days later, I’m back in Somerset for the opening of Creed’s show.

Now the gallery is full of bizarre artworks. This empty space has been transformed. There are neon signs and dead flowers, and pyramids of cardboard boxes. There’s a film of Creed singing one of his monotonous yet curiously catchy songs. The action paintings we made the other day are up on the wall.

‘I was trying not to plan this show too much,’ says Creed, as he takes a group of journalists around the gallery.

‘Basically, something that is ultimately under control is dead. That’s the problem of life, and that’s the problem of making work – how to narrow things down enough to be able to make something and not kill it, because the best works are alive.’

After the tour, while everyone else sits down to lunch, we find a quiet corner and sit down for a quick chat. I ask him about the action paintings we did the other day. Their unpredictability is what he likes best.

‘I think the worst thing you can do with work is have an idea beforehand of what you want and then doggedly stick to that,’ he tells me.

‘I like working with other people - I find it exciting.’

So what sort of art excites him? ‘All kinds of things - I often see music videos that I really like, and think they should be in art galleries.’

Picasso has always been a favourite, but his interests aren’t confined to visual art (‘I think Billy Connolly’s a great artist’). His own work reflects this.

‘I really fear only doing one thing. I feel like I’ve got to try and work on all fronts, because I don’t know which front’s the best one. I really fear getting caught in a trap.’

Creed found this sense of freedom as a student at the Slade.

Renowned as Britain’s leading art school, the Slade School of Fine Art has produced traditional painters like Augustus John and iconoclasts like Derek Jarman.

‘I loved my time at the Slade,’ says Creed. ‘I really had a good time when I was a student, and really liked my tutors.’

A particular inspiration among these tutors was the performance artist Bruce McLean. People like McLean gave Creed the confidence to make the art he wanted.

‘People are crazy and mad, and life’s crazy. Art’s a place where you can do crazy, mad, stupid things.’

Before I leave for home, I take another look around the exhibition. It all feels rather hit and miss, but for every artwork that falls flat there’s one that thrills me.

A tree is festooned with plastic bags, turning litter into decoration. Back in London, that evening, I see a tree just like it, with supermarket shopping bags snared in its branches. Before, I would have walked straight past it, but tonight I stop and look at it.

That’s the thing about Martin Creed – his art isn’t for everyone, but if you open your eyes, like all good artists, he will make you see the world around you in a slightly different way.