A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a wild turkey's egg. Turk has produced several of these large forms, based on the eggs of different bird species. The first of these works was commissioned for the 2001 exhibition ‘DEAD”, organized by the artist-led group Welfare State International. The exhibition explored alternative, celebratory approaches to the taboo of death, and each artist was invited to create non-traditional versions of the cultural trappings that surround death. Turk created ‘Coffin’, later re-titled ‘Oeuvre’. The collective title of the subsequent series of giant birds’ egg sculpture – ‘Oeuvre (Hen)’, ‘Oeuvre (Duck)’ etc – plays on the similarity between the word for the life’s work of an artist, ‘Oeuvre’, and the French word for egg, ‘oeuf’.

Oeuvre (Wild Turkey)

Painted fibreglass

Eggs

Animalia

Public Sculpture

A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a wild turkey's egg.

Duck Duck Duck

Collage with newsprint

Readymade

Work on paper

In his neon works, Turk not only resurrects the motifs of art’s modernist lore, but excavates and further mythologizes his own practice – quite literally sending his own legacy up in lights. Drawing reference to Magritte’s Elective Affinities (1933) – a Surrealist painting of an oversized egg in a cage, where the two seemingly unrelated subjects find a common theme of redundancy, eggs have been a recurring symbol throughout Turk’s career, appearing in his paintings, collages, sculptures, and public monuments. In Neo Egg, Turk uses this image as a sign of interconnectivity and infinity; its soft yellow radiance giving a ‘new religion’ halo effect to his billboard-scale homage to origin.&nbsp;

Neo Egg

Yellow neon

In his neon works, Turk not only resurrects the motifs of art’s modernist lore, but excavates and further mythologizes his own practice – quite literally sending his own legacy up in lights. Drawing reference to Magritte’s Elective Affinities (1933) – a Surrealist painting of an oversized egg in a cage, where the two seemingly unrelated subjects find a common theme of redundancy, eggs have been a recurring symbol throughout Turk’s career, appearing in his paintings, collages, sculptures, and public monuments. In Neo Egg, Turk uses this image as a sign of interconnectivity and infinity; its soft yellow radiance giving a ‘new religion’ halo effect to his billboard-scale homage to origin.____________________________________________Following in the footsteps of Dali, Magritte and Manzoni, eggs recurs again and again in Gavin’s work as sculptural metaphors for the surreal philosophical puzzle; which came first, the chicken or egg? Symbols of life, of creation, of originality, fragility and mortality Turk’s eggs appear as surreal faces, as giant duck eggs, as broken shells depicting his signature and in liquid form as mayonnaise and egg tempura, while his “hare” eggs create mythical new hybrids altogether. Transforming eggs from the sacred to the profane, the pure to the parasitical, a symbol of creation to something created, Turk journeys from eggs to eggs cups to egg-cup shaped fonts as he explores the delicate relationship between life and death, art and artist.

Sculpture

In his neon works, Turk not only resurrects the motifs of art’s modernist lore, but excavates and further mythologizes his own practice – quite literally sending his own legacy up in lights. Drawing reference to Magritte’s Elective Affinities (1933) – a Surrealist painting of an oversized egg in a cage, where the two seemingly unrelated subjects find a common theme of redundancy, eggs have been a recurring symbol throughout Turk’s career, appearing in his paintings, collages, sculptures, and public monuments.

A knife slowly spinning on a yellow formica table with an electric motor. Gavin Turk in conversation with Louisa Buck, December 2006: Louisa Buck: The Negotiation of Purpose is a piece in which a knife spins round and round on a tabletop as in the game of chance. But in this case a hidden motor means that the knife keeps on turning and never stops. The implication seems to be that in this work there is no single static moment of intent or decision, the situation remains endlessly open ended. Determined purpose is cancelled out by perpetual motion: nobody is telling you what to do. Gavin Turk: The purpose is the state of negotiation, I guess. For me it was a Dada or Surrealist title for a kind of machine. A metaphor of a modernity that never quite arrived, it just became something else, it turned into what we have now. Louisa Buck: Underpinning much of modernism was the belief that truths would be arrived at and absolutes reached, whereas the present seems better expressed by this functionally dysfunctional machine that refuses a single, certain state. Or put in another way indecision is left in suspended animation. Gavin Turk: I saw this table with the knife on it as a reference to a ‘still life’ with the direction of the knife, its angle to the picture plane as its key compositional element. But at the same time because it is moving all the time. The audience gets a kind of multi perspective on the object in a cubistic way. There’s also the cliché of a revolving plinth with a sculpture on it, maybe it’s a television thing…

The Negotiation of Purpose

Kitchen table, knife and motor

A knife slowly spinning on a yellow formica table with an electric motor.Gavin Turk in conversation with Louisa Buck, December 2006: Louisa Buck: The Negotiation of Purpose is a piece in which a knife spins round and round on a tabletop as in the game of chance. But in this case a hidden motor means that the knife keeps on turning and never stops. The implication seems to be that in this work there is no single static moment of intent or decision, the situation remains endlessly open ended. Determined purpose is cancelled out by perpetual motion: nobody is telling you what to do. Gavin Turk: The purpose is the state of negotiation, I guess. For me it was a Dada or Surrealist title for a kind of machine. A metaphor of a modernity that never quite arrived, it just became something else, it turned into what we have now. Louisa Buck: Underpinning much of modernism was the belief that truths would be arrived at and absolutes reached, whereas the present seems better expressed by this functionally dysfunctional machine that refuses a single, certain state. Or put in another way indecision is left in suspended animation. Gavin Turk: I saw this table with the knife on it as a reference to a ‘still life’ with the direction of the knife, its angle to the picture plane as its key compositional element. But at the same time because it is moving all the time. The audience gets a kind of multi perspective on the object in a cubistic way. There’s also the cliché of a revolving plinth with a sculpture on it, maybe it’s a television thing…

Automaton

Fate

A knife slowly spinning on a yellow formica table with an electric motor. Gavin Turk in conversation with Louisa Buck, December 2006: Louisa Buck: The Negotiation of Purpose is a piece in which a knife spins round and round on a tabletop as in the game of chance. But in this case a hidden motor means that the knife keeps on turning and never stops. The implication seems to be that in this work there is no single static moment of intent or decision, the situation remains endlessly open ended. Determined purpose is cancelled out by perpetual motion: nobody is telling you what to do.

A watercolour painting of a cabbage in reference to the philosopher Hegel.

Hegel&rsquo;s Cabbage

Fourteen framed watercolours on paper

Food

The End

A watercolour painting of a cabbage in reference to the philosopher Hegel.

Hegel's Cabbage

A pencil rubbing of the tales side of a two pence piece.

Lead Copper

Coloured pencil on paperPrint of font

Money

A pencil rubbing of the tales side of a two pence piece.

A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a wild turkey's egg. Turk has produced several of these large forms, based on the eggs of different bird species. The first of these works was commissioned for the 2001 exhibition &lsquo;DEAD&rdquo;, organized by the artist-led group Welfare State International. The exhibition explored alternative, celebratory approaches to the taboo of death, and each artist was invited to create non-traditional versions of the cultural trappings that surround death. Turk created &lsquo;Coffin&rsquo;, later re-titled &lsquo;Oeuvre&rsquo;. The collective title of the subsequent series of giant birds&rsquo; egg sculpture &ndash; &lsquo;Oeuvre (Hen)&rsquo;, &lsquo;Oeuvre (Duck)&rsquo; etc &ndash; plays on the similarity between the word for the life&rsquo;s work of an artist, &lsquo;Oeuvre&rsquo;, and the French word for egg, &lsquo;oeuf&rsquo;.

A frame taken from a 1970's Warhol artwork reused by the Artist to surround a white signature written backwards on the inside of a perspex cover casting a shadow signature on to a white canvas.

This is one of a series of works made bringing together recycling and the signature. They bring the two together in a seamless join. The obviousness of the idea hides its complexity. The piece starts with a second hand frame which has come from a small Andy Warhol print that has probably found itself upgraded to a newer frame. Into the frame is set a blank canvas. This ensemble is then set into a perspex box frame which has been signed by the artist on the inside with a chinagraph pencil. The signature then casts a shadow onto the blank canvas and the shadow of the signature becomes the subject of the picture. Except it is not quite so simple as that. The artist has, for instance, signed his signature backwards so that it can be captured on the inside of the outer frame but still read forwards.

Andy Warhol Self-portrait with Hands Around Neck

Recycled frame, acrylic on canvas & chinagraph pencil

Appropriation

Warhol

Recycling

Signatures

A frame taken from a 1970's Warhol artwork reused by the Artist to surround a white signature written backwards on the inside of a perspex cover casting a shadow signature on to a white canvas.

A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a duck egg.

Oeuvre (Duck)

A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a duck egg.

Two coloured egg shapes collaged onto a white background.

One or Other

Newsprint on paper

Two coloured egg shapes collaged onto a white background.

The Queen's head from a 2p stamp collaged onto a 1p stamp.

1p Stamp, 2p Queen

Stamp on paper

The Queen's head from a 2p stamp collaged onto a 1p stamp.

A rubbing of the Queens head side of a 2p coin.

Heads

Coloured pencil on paperPrint of font

A rubbing of the Queens head side of a 2p coin.

Coin rubbings of two different 2p coins, one showing an earlier version of the Royal effigy and the other showing the 1999 version.

Before and After

Coin rubbings of two different 2p coins, one showing an earlier version of the Royal effigy and the other showing the 1999 version.

An enlarged photocopy of the Queen's head side of 2p coin with a clay smear on the nose.

Small Brown Nose Queen

Clay on photocopied image

Forgery

An enlarged photocopy of the Queen's head side of 2p coin with a clay smear on the nose.

Seventeen egg shapes in different tones of newsprint cut from the Times Newspaper.

Eggs Times Seventeen

Seventeen egg shapes in different tones of newsprint cut from the Times Newspaper.

A page torn from an Andy Warhol catalogue originally showing Warhol’s ‘Brillo’ boxes, altered by the Artist to look like plain cardboard boxes.

Four unbranded boxes

Acrylic ink on printed paper

Packaging

A page torn from an Andy Warhol catalogue originally showing Warhol’s ‘Brillo’ boxes, altered by the Artist to look like plain cardboard boxes.