Martin Creed’s Silly Humor Lights Up This Holiday Video

"It's you, it's you, it's you," sings Creed.

A still from the video for Martin Creed's new song "It's You." Photo via Vimeo.

“Whatever you feel, whatever you want, whatever you do, whatever you don’t … it’s you at the front and it’s you at the back. It’s you.” So sings the Scottish artist and musician Martin Creed on the song “It’s You,” released just in time for the holidays.

It’s You from Martin Creed on Vimeo.

The video centers on Creed, who sings the carol-like song from a living room outfitted with a blinking Christmas tree, with a chihuahua in the crook of his arm and surrounded by onlookers holding candles, two of them dressed as angels. Every few moments, the image gives way to another, nearly identical one, the only change being a difference in Creed’s festive patterned sweater and headgear.

Starting Thursday, shoppers and other passersby on London’s Savile Row will be able to watch the video in the window of Hauser & Wirth gallery (which represents the artist), complementing a show inside of sculptures and drawings by Los Angeles artist Ken Price.

The standalone single follows Creed’s latest record, Thoughts Lined Up, which was released in July, during the run of his exhibition “The Back Door” at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.

Perhaps Creed’s greatest claim to fame is his winning the Turner Prize in 2001 for the gloriously dumb Work no. 227: the lights going on and off, in which the illumination in a given room switches on and off.

The new song partakes in a bit of that trademark silly humor, recalling the old expression, “Wherever you go, there you are.”


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