‘I think that the ways those people move across the street, it’s a beautiful dance basically. It’s beautiful and it’s full of life. It’s got the difficulty of life in it, as well as the beauty of life,’ Martin Creed 2014. 

An important theme in Martin Creed’s work is the exploration of the human body. ‘Work No.1701’ examines the realities of walking for someone with physical challenges. Over the course of 4 minutes and 15 seconds, we see seven men and women with some level of physical disability walk across the same intersection in Greenwich Village, New York, on the rhythm of the music.  

Though all of these individuals have some level of physical disability, they cross the street confidently and ably. The work is critical of a world that is not open to diversity, where everyone needs to fall in line. It can be seen as a celebration of being different, a parade of individual flaws, each walk pattern interacting differently with the rhythm of the song. The footage is set to Creed’s song ‘Work No. 1701, You Return’ (2012-2013), whose lyrics emphasize repetition. 

Creed: ‘I wanted to show people moving across the world in all the different ways they can… I would say that everyone is disabled in the sense that we are all struggling with our own difficulties. And everyone expresses themselves in the way that they move.’ 

Courtesy Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar 

Martin Creed is a contemporary British artist known for his installations that incorporate vernacular objects such as balloons. Often purposefully irritating to his audience, Creed creates works that make people reconsider their understanding of art.

Born on October 21, 1968, in Wakefield, United Kingdom, he grew up in the city of Glasgow in Scotland. The artist studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1986 to 1990. After finishing school, he became disillusioned with painting, believing it to be a limited means of expression, and stopped for a number of years. Since then, he has produced numerous shows featuring paintings and provocative installation works. In addition to his career as an artist, Creed fronts a rock band, Owada. Formed in 1994, the group performs internationally and plays a part in some of his works. The artist currently lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.