Martin Creed’s playful and perspicacious exhibition “Down Over Up” centers on the concepts of increment and ordered process. Creed uses recognizable objects and materials to build his sculptures, and many are stacked in progressions of size, height, or tone: a tower of cardboard boxes; an orderly pile of chairs; wood heaped according to width, in piles increasing from one to six planks; a row of seven nails hammered side by side in descending order of length and width. Additionally, Creed has turned the elevator into a sonic sculpture—Work No. 409, 2005–10—in which the sounds of a chorus singing an ascending or descending chromatic scale can be heard as the lift moves correspondingly. Work No. 1061, 2010, transforms the gallery’s central staircase into a musical instrument: Each step up or down triggers a synthesized tone, resulting in a variable, unassuming soundscape throughout the gallery.
In the metaphysically minded photograph Work No. 316: Self Portrait Thinking, 2004, Creed stands on a deck overlooking the sea, gazing at the surrounding railing posts. The caption—1,2,3,4 . . . —inside a cartoon thought balloon over his head captures his thoughts as he finds serene order through the simple process of counting. Extending his practice into the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for one week during the exhibition, Creed arranged for classical ballet dancers to perform his witty piece Ballet: Work No. 1020, complete with a live band, videos, and the artist providing quips throughout on the process and intentions of this seemingly chaotic piece, from which, in Creed’s distinctive manner, meaningful patterns eventually emerge.
