I meet Martin Creed more than a week before his retrospective What’s the point of it? opens at the Hayward. The gallery is full of 25 years’ worth of improbable, witty, uplifting art; I am especially gladdened by a wall covered in 1,000 prints of broccoli.
But the show is not ready yet: the atmosphere is of playful disarray. There is a display case in which there is a crumpled sheet of A4 paper (a 1994 Creed provocation). On top of it, someone from the gallery has placed a sticky note that warns ART WORK! – to passing cleaners. One of the things that makes Creed controversial is that he does not draw a line between art and life. He says: “Anything is art that is used as art by people.”