Born: Wakefield, Yorkshire, 1968

Martin Creed's work takes the form of a series of pragmatic and often humorous solutions to a fundamental conundrum: how to assert oneself in the world when nothing is certain. Often slight in scale and made of mundane materials, Creed's works nevertheless interfere with the surrounding space, exposing rules and conventions that are usually taken for granted. Work No. 74, for example, consists of a one-inch cube of masking tape which the artist places in the middle of a blank wall. Some pieces can provoke a sense of disquiet. In his neon piece, DON'T WORRY, which greets visitors as they enter the exhibition, the calming effect of this everyday phrase is undermined by the fact that every other second the neon lights go off.

Creed's position is best expressed by another neon piece, Work No. 143 of 1996, currently placed on Tate Britain's façade. It reads: the whole world + the work = the whole world. This dictum suggests that the work of art has no impact on the world. Yet, another interpretation might be that art is not a rarefied sphere of activity, but an inextricable part of life.