In the grand neo-classical Duveen gallery of Tate Britain, runners are sprinting, at 30-second intervals, as fast as they can from one end of the gallery to the other. No need to ask – it is an installation, of course. Martin Creed’s “Work No. 850” was specially commissioned for the space and will entertain visitors until November. Creed is famous for his Turner-prize-winning installation of a light turning on and off (“Work No. 227”), and if you were to ask what came before “Work No. 850”, you may be relieved to learn that the artist’s work is at least now veering towards the wholesome end of human activity – numbers 503, 600 and 715 dealt with vomiting, defecation and sex respectively.

Creed has asked the runners to sprint “as if their lives depended on it”, and they’re making a pretty decent fist of it. They have to deal with bemused visitors of course, most of them foreign, who thought they were there to look at paintings, although they should have been briefed otherwise by the earnest notices issued by the gallery: “For reasons of safety, we ask the public not to run or obstruct the runners.” Fine, in other words, for the artist to “upset any preconceived ideas of how to move appropriately through an art space” (from the gallery’s director, Stephen Deuchar), but do keep still because abrupt movement, as well as being ennobling of the human spirit, can be something of a safety hazard.