Martin Creed (born 1968) is a British artist and musician. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227, The Lights Going On and Off. He studied art at the Slade School of Art at University College London from 1986 to 1990. Creed’s work is often a small intervention in the world, making use of existing materials or situations rather than bringing new material into the world. He uses whichever medium seems suitable.

For Creed there is no difference between making music and making art. Like his Work No. 850, in which runners ran through the Tate Gallery in 2008, his music is disarmingly simple but makes an immediate impact. In 2010, he provided the cover art for a Futuristic Retro Champions single, while supporting its launch with an appearance with his own band. His UK wide piece Work No. 1197 All the bells in the country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes was commissioned to herald the start of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
In 2009, Creed wrote and choreographed Work No. 1020, Ballet, a live performance of his own music, ballet, words and film, originally produced by Sadler’s Wells, London and premiered in the Lilian Baylis Studio, while later shown on Sadler’s Wells main stage. In 2010, Work No. 1020: Ballet was performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and most recently at the Royal Festival Hall as part of his first retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, which was inaugurated in January 2014, a major survey looking at the past 25 years of his work. To coincide with the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Sounthbank Centre also commissioned Martin Creed’s new organ work Face to Face with Bach.

With respect to Creed’s international presence, his work has been exhibited and is collected by venues including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Moscow Museum of Modern Art; the Centre Pompidou–Metz, France; Tate Modern, London; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.