Martin Creed: MOTHERS

“Perhaps not one to take your mother to.”

Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET | 020 7287 2300 | More information

Hauser & Wirth on Savile Row - equipped with 15,000 square feet of exhibition space - is not unaccustomed to large installations, but the current exhibition, dedicated to Turner Prize winner, Martin Creed, is possibly the mother of all their shows.

At the heart of the exhibition is a very large, 12.5 metre-long, revolving neon ‘sculpture’ (sign) that reads "MOTHERS".  This magnificent work by Creed may not be the only work featured, but it is by far the most prominent. The sign is menacing in its enormity, and its violent manner of rotating - at just above head-height and at varying speeds - augments the viewer’s vulnerability, cementing ‘mother’ as an omnipresent being and evoking the complex, uncertain but ever-powerful relationship between mother and child. And if you’re over 6 foot five, it may also provoke such existential questions as: would decapitation by Mother be a good way to go?

The show is not devoid of humour. There are large photographs (and a film accompanied by a song by Creed) featuring two dogs: one dog is large and one is small. The large is portrayed as “not thinking” as it lolls around clumsily, whereas the small dog - seen to be strutting his stuff and asserting his presence (in a manner only small dogs, and people, seem to be able to do) - is clearly “thinking”. Like these photographs, Creed's film, Work No. 1177, deals with a similar concept: the film features a woman's nipple becoming erect and then soft - a body reacting, rather than a mind thinking. And I think we have all been guilty of that.

A reactive,

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