Pottery gallery & Martin Creed exhibition at the Harris Museum

Met up with Pam to have a look around the Martin Creed exhibition currently at the Harris Museum in Preston. We had half an hour to spare before it opened and looked around their pottery gallery.

It is not my first time looking at the display cases but this time I picked up on a few real gems hidden among this collection. For me outstanding were these:

When we had a look around the Martin Creed exhibition. Well .... we had a real laugh. It really begs the question: What is art? I'm not convinced that I see his installations, etc. shown here as art but I admire his audacity to show them as art. However, if it means that art make you think about things in different way, then maybe...

Anyway, we did enjoy it. I particularly enjoyed his 2013 film, Work No. 1701, showing a succession of people crossing a road in New York. Such a mundane and every day occurrence seems to take on a different significance when filmed and shown in a darkened space in an art gallery.

As for the four televisions screens showing people vomiting in an empty exhibition space or the entire room reserved for the Turner price winning lights-on/lights-off piece I find baffling.

The main room shows a conglomeration of selection pieces of his work, which seem to form some sort of whole. Here we see seven different works of art: the cacti, the neon sign, the stripes and four paintings. Without the explanations, however, all this doesn't make much sense to me and even then I'm not much wiser. Perhaps one has to immerse oneself further into his work and thought processes.

Strangely, while we were wondering around a moaning whaling sound echoed from someone, who was part of a group of people in wheelchairs visiting the Harris, added to this slightly surreal experience. Possibly art is made here by the visitors and their perception - even if two of us were the only visitors during those 30 minutes it took us to look around.