Martin Creed fills entire museums with his balloons

Martin Creed’s Half the Air in a Given Space

Martin Creed’s Work Half the Air in a Given Space, is a brilliantly fun way to experience interactive art. As an audience member, you find yourself pushing your way through a space, whether it be a room or a hallway or a lobby, filled (only halfway) with up to 37,000 balloons. You as an audience member are completely surrounded by marshmallows, and although the image is joyfully preposterous, however, as you get into the space you find you feel a mixture of emotions including exhilaration, disorientation, but don’t be surprised if you feel a little bit claustrophobic.

What is globophobia?

Half the Air in a Given Space can be described as an interactive installation (which is easily an understatement if anything). This is every child’s dream or every globophobic’s worst nightmare (globophobia is the fear of balloons), basically, a space that’s filled with hundreds or thousands of balloons of the same color. Half a room’s entire volume is filled with balloons, and visitors become a part of the art by walking through the balloon filled room.

How does this work make you feel?

For those who are not globophobic or claustrophobic, this piece is supposed to evoke the feeling of deep celebration and remanence of childhood memories. If you have no problem with balloons or small spaces, you can be pretty much guaranteed that you will leave the installation with a smile on your face from the touch of nostalgia you have emerged from.

Video: Interview with Martin Creed

Different versions of Half the Air in a Given Space

In 2012, Creed installed four versions of this work in neighborhoods throughout the city, each site featured a different colored balloon. Thus not only are audience members who brave the balloons submerged in a room half-filled with air, but they are submerged in the color, in a supernatural world in which their senses cannot fully be relied on, a world in which beauty and playfulness are combined.

Selected works

Work No. 200, 1998, Tate St.Ives

Work No. 204, 2012, City Gallery, Chicago

Work No. 247, 2011, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo

Work No. 329, 2004, Rennie Collection

Work No. 360, 2015, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle

Work No. 965, 2008, The Cleveland Museum Of Art

Work No. 1562, 2015, THEMUSEUM

Work No. 2497, 2015, Park Avenue Armory & Phoenix Art Museum

Phoenix Art Museum, 2017