Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
Sat 22 July
Few musicians can claim to have had their work performed the length and breadth of the land in quite the way that Martin Creed can. The Wakefield-born, Glaswegian-raised artist’s snappily named piece All The Bells In A Country Rung As Quickly And Loudly As Possible For Three Minutes marked the opening of the 2012 London Olympics and featured Big Ben and numerous members of the public as collaborators.
Creed’s Cardiff show promises to be somewhat more intimate, an opportunity for him to air some of the tracks from last year’s LP Thoughts Lined Up. That title has a pungent whiff of self-deprecating irony about it: there’s little in his appearance – paint-splattered suit; fuzzy explosion of hair – or his interviews that suggests a neatly ordered mind. Creed’s 2016 exhibition What You Find saw him creating artwork out of detritus, and on songs like Understanding his Moldy Peaches-style shoestring punk-folk has a similarly scrappy, junkyard feel to it.
For Creed, art and music are an attempt to make meaning out of life’s messy reality. If at times it seems as though the man who achieved tabloid notoriety for winning the Turner Prize with a light going on and off is just making it up as he goes along, that’s because he often is. As one song title puts it, What The Fuck Am I Doing? Get along to Chapter to find out.
Tickets: £14. Info: 029 2030 4400 (BW)
