Martin Creed's Work No 850

Creed has instructed his volunteers to run 'as if their lives depended on it', and each run will be followed by an equivalent pause, 'like a musical rest, during which the grand Neoclassical gallery is empty' Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

The artist himself on his own run through the gallery. Creed has revealed that the work was inspired by a visit he once paid to the catacombs of the Capuchin monks in Palermo. 'We were very late and only had five minutes to see it all before closing time. To do it we had to run ... It was that kind of delirious running which makes you laugh uncontrollably when you're doing it. I think it's good to see museums at high speed. It leaves time for other things' Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty

Creed was born in Wakefield in 1968, and trained at the Slade School of Art. In 1993 his Work No. 81, 'a one-inch cube of masking tape in the middle of every wall in a building', was installed in the offices of the London firm, Starkmann Ltd. Since then Creed has had 18 solo exhibitions or projects in Europe and North America Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

Creed's style is characterised by a sly wit and a determined anti-materialism. His minimalist works, all titled by number, have included a piece of Blu Tack pressed into a wall and a sheet of A4 paper crumpled into a ball, and have been described as 'attempts to short-circuit the visually overloaded, choice-saturated culture in which we live' Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

Work No 850 is the Duveens commission 2008, an annual sculpture event along the lines of Tate Modern's yearly turbine hall commission. Creed's will not be the first Duveen work, and artists including Michael Landy and Anya Gallaccio and have already featured in the galleries Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

Representatives of the press watch an athlete. A note on the gallery's website reads: 'For reasons of safety, we ask the public not to run or obstruct the runners' Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

A camerawoman films one of the runners Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features