New show now running at the Tate
Sprinters will be paid £10 per hour to run through the halls of one of the UKs most famous art galleries.
Turner Prize-winner Martin Creed has the revealed the runners as his new work of art 'Work No. 850' at Tate Britain.
The show will see a series of semi-pro athletes sprinting through a 86 metre long gallery every 30 seconds for eight hours per day for the next four months.
Creed, 39, who won the 2001 Turner Prize for a piece called The Lights Going On And Off, said: “I like running. I like seeing people run and I like running myself… running is the opposite of being still."
He advertised in running mags and sports clubs to find the sprinters though he still needs more people to take part at the gallery on the Thames's north bank.
"If you think about death as being completely still and movement as a sign of life, then the fastest movement possible is the biggest sign of life. So then running fast is like the exact opposite of death: it’s an example of aliveness,” added Creed.
The work was inspired by a trip to the catacombs of the Cappuccini monks in Palermo, Italy. Arriving at the crypt just before closing time, Creed says he had only five minutes to see the museum and was forced to run around the space trying to look at everything.
Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain, said: "Martin Creed has responded to the historic Duveen gallery spaces with a compelling, simple and lyrical project.
"In lifting an everyday activity out of its usual context and dropping it into the central galleries of Tate Britain, it upsets any preconceived ideas of how to move appropriately through an art space."
Credit: Martin Creed - Work No. 850 2008 © The artist.
Photos: Hugo Glendinning
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art comes in all forms
So does crap, wannt put my morning constitutional in a museum too?
What pretentious rubbish. This isn't art, and it never will be.
I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that have come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. Pablo Picasso