Martin Creed

Martin Creed was born on 21 October 1968 in Wakefield, England. His family moved to Scotland when he was three, and he grew up in Milton of Campsie and Lenzie, near Glasgow. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, from 1986 to 1990.

Early in his career, Creed adopted the practice that still defines his output: nearly every piece he makes, regardless of medium, is assigned a number in a single ongoing sequence called "Work No.," rather than being given its own individual title. The system spans installation, sculpture, painting, music, and performance, and includes works as varied as a room filled with balloons to a specified percentage of its volume, a line of runners sprinting through a gallery at intervals, and large neon signs spelling out plain, often deadpan phrases.

Creed's national profile rose sharply in 2001, when he won the Turner Prize for Work No. 227: The lights going on and off, an installation at Tate Britain in which the gallery lights simply switched on and off at intervals. The piece, and the prize, provoked wide public debate in Britain about the value of conceptual art. He is also active as a musician and performer, releasing music under his own name. In 2001 he moved to the Aeolian island of Alicudi, Italy, and he now divides his time between London, where he keeps a flat in the Barbican Estate, and Alicudi.

Creed's critical reputation was forged in controversy. His 2001 Turner Prize win for Work No. 227: The lights going on and off divided critics and the tabloid press, with detractors dismissing it as a non-event and supporters arguing it distilled his interest in the simplest possible gesture. That divide has narrowed as his institutional profile has grown, through a 2014 survey, What's the Point of It?, at the Hayward Gallery, London; The Back Door at the Park Avenue Armory, New York, in 2016; ARTIST ROOMS: Martin Creed at Tate Britain in 2018; and Toast at Hauser & Wirth, London, in 2019. Critics now tend to treat the early controversy as evidence that his deadpan, participatory gestures were doing more conceptual work than his skeptics initially credited.

Creed's all-time auction high is Work No. 204: Half the air in a given space, which sold for USD 158,500 at Christie's in March 2012 (exact sale location not confirmed in available sources), a result multiple market-tracking sources identify as his record to date. That figure does not appear to have been surpassed by any other publicly documented sale, though comprehensive auction data for Creed is limited: a later Christie's London sale of Work No. 3439, Everything Is Going To Be Alright, brought GBP 32,500 on 25 March 2021, and a 2025 online sale of Work No. 2092 totaled roughly USD 156,250, both below the 2012 high. The pattern points to a market that trades infrequently and in a comparatively narrow price band relative to Creed's institutional standing.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Creed, and because so much of his work exists as instructions, editions, or site-specific installations rather than single unique objects, authentication and verification typically run through the artist's studio or his representing gallery, Hauser & Wirth, rather than through a market document. The wide range of formats in his practice, from small neon works to room-scale installations, means prices vary enormously by work type and scale, and any single auction result should be read in that context. With the auction record still standing from a 2012 sale and total public sale volume modest, collectors should treat individual results as data points in a thin market rather than as a stable price curve.