The table is made of steel. The top is finished with clear original ‘Briwax’ (for lustre) and the table legs are finished with linseed oil (to protect against discolouration). Being steel, the table will be vulnerable to rust if exposed to moisture, so should be stored off the floor in a dry place. The table can be buffed to a shine without re-waxing: use separate cloths for the legs and the tabletop. The exhaust is made of blown glass. This is a more delicate material than domestic glass and should be treated with great care. The surface is very vulnerable to scratching and all abrasive contact should be avoided. When cleaning, use only water and very mild products such as vinegar, baking soda or glass cleaner suitable for lead crystal. Take care to use only cloths, which will leave no lint behind, especially when cleaning the inside. ‘Wypall’ cloths or e-cloths are very good for this purpose.When handling and moving the glass exhaust, great care should be taken to support each piece at its most vulnerable points. Each piece should be supported under the main chamber (the heaviest part) with the other parts being cradled to prevent any stress at the different junctions. Take care to keep the glass away from zips and buttons on your clothes as you are carrying. The glass exhaust and tabletop will both be marked if the two are scuffed together, so when installing the glass work on the table, lift into place rather than dragging. Wear gloves to avoid fingerprints on either surface. Because the table surface is waxed, the glass exhaust will move and spin if it is knocked. Push the two glass parts together firmly to improve the stability of the piece.For Turk the exhaust pipe represents the transport of air and is a metaphor for both breathing and exhaustion. The 'pregnant snake-like object' also holds up an anthropological mirror to societies reliance on roads and transportation and the consumption of resources at the heart of this. This work relates to his current series of bronze exhaust pipes convincingly painted to resemble rusty iron that alludes to Duchamp's readymades whilst also referring to the pipe as a symbol of more innocent times, as Bertrand Russell and his fellow intellectuals puffed their way to enlightenment and the brave new world. In this particular manifestation, the pipe is created using the exhalation or exhaustion of breath to hand blow the glass into the desired shape.'

This Is Not A Pipe

Blown glass on steel table.

Transit

Vehicles

Automaton

Duchamp

Glass

The table is made of steel. The top is finished with clear original ‘Briwax’ (for lustre) and the table legs are finished with linseed oil (to protect against discolouration). Being steel, the table will be vulnerable to rust if exposed to moisture, so should be stored off the floor in a dry place. The table can be buffed to a shine without re-waxing: use separate cloths for the legs and the tabletop.

As a direct reference to the painting ‘La Victoire’ by Rene Magritte. Ajar is a surreal gateway: a spiritual journey through the imagination, an interactive sculpture that children will enjoy as much as adults. It is a key to the imagination: unlocking ideas of the infinite as mused on by Aldous Huxley quoting Blake. "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."	It simultaneously references Duchamp earlier work ‘11 Rue Larrey’ the door that is never open or shut. This sculpture is designed as an inside installation but with two doorways it is never definitively open or closed. Ajar would be placed without walls and permanently open encouraging the choice to go around, or go through.

Ajar (Highbury)

Patinated bronze

Doors

Painted Bronze

As a direct reference to the painting ‘La Victoire’ by Rene Magritte. Ajar is a surreal gateway: a spiritual journey through the imagination, an interactive sculpture that children will enjoy as much as adults. It is a key to the imagination: unlocking ideas of the infinite as mused on by Aldous Huxley quoting Blake. "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

A bronze cast of a discarded, half eaten apple core, with a long stalk and pip showing, painted to look real. Eaten and then thrown away, Turk takes the discarded, shrivelled and dead and gives it new life in the form of miniature painted bronze sculptures. Heavy with the symbolism of an English Eden, these once ripe fruits, alongside their associations with knowledge and temptation, Adam’s apple and of course, Eve, have been discarded and tossed away. Now “rotten to the core”, the fruits of the utopian English garden have become a poisonous symbol of man’s fall. Or perhaps they are nothing more ominous than evidence of a healthy diet in which their daily consumption contains the promise to keep the doctor away.

Given

Painted bronze

Packaging

Apples

Food

Waste

A bronze cast of a discarded, half eaten apple core, with a long stalk and pip showing, painted to look real.

Installation info: Handle carefully with gloves, ensuring when placed it is done so gently as painted edges are fragile. Ensure signed underside is face down.  Avoid direct sunlight, temperature fluctuations and moisture.

H.M.S Queequeg

Recycling

The Sea

Domestic

Installation info: Handle carefully with gloves, ensuring when placed it is done so gently as painted edges are fragile. Ensure signed underside is face down. Avoid direct sunlight, temperature fluctuations and moisture.

Installation info: To be displayed in custom made steel and glass vitrine as per photosBronze exhaust pipe painted to look real

Conduit

Installation info: To be displayed in custom made steel and glass vitrine as per photosBronze exhaust pipe painted to look real

Exhaust

Installation info: To be displayed in custom made steel and glass vitrine as per photos Bronze exhaust pipe painted to look real

A bronze cast of a shrivelled apple core with red skin and stalk, painted to look real.

Sculpture

A bronze cast of a shrivelled apple core with red skin and stalk, painted to look real.

Untitled (Rubbing)

Rubbing on paper

Work on paper

Van Air

Balloon, string, wax seals and wooden base

On the occasion of  the 55th Venice Biennale Turk created a site specific project for the Gervasuti Foundation.   The installation comprised of a work based on the artist’s ongoing Transit Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and ‘vernacular‘, a metaphor implying the social connotations that the iconic white Ford van of the ‘90s represents in British society and a paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context, a city without roads.  Vanacular reconfigures a language of identity between that which is considered an accident of fate and that which is invested with intent, both in art and in life.Turk often recycles famous art historical imagery in order to make contemporary societal correlations. Vanacular revives the classic pop-art technique of silk-screen-on-canvas while referencing the works of its most celebrated exponents Andy Warhol and Robert Raushenberg with his 18 metre long Currents (1970). Inspired by Warhol’s famous Death And Disaster series (1962-3), which were derived from photographs of fatal car accidents taken from newspapers, Turk’s Vanacular comprises of a 27 metre long canvas with a selection of sourced images of crashed and/or burnt-out Ford Transit vans.  The expressive shapes of the distorted metal, every scratch as if charged with meaning, also allude to the underlying social tensions that led to the 2011 London riots which some of these images come from.  The repeated still images silk-screened in a ‘Warhol style’ range of colour combinations produce an animated effect as if to suggest a disaster movie. The orchestration of colours enhances this sense of motion which in turn effects a transformation or change from the stasis of the crashed vans into a new energy or lifeforce. The Transit Disaster series is not merely a pastiche of Warhol’s famous car crash paintings since Turk replaces the American car with an image of a white transit van, a symbol of a disappearing era of working class Britain. Vanacular also relates, albeit indirectly, to the term ‘Fordism’, the notion of a modern economic and social system based on an assembly line of mass production for a mass market. Turk’s Vanacular represents a visual manifestation of urban unrest, which through continuous clashes and disasters is heading towards a materialistic mutation.

Vanacular

Silikscreen on canvas

On the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale Turk created a site specific project for the Gervasuti Foundation. The installation comprised of a work based on the artist’s ongoing Transit Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and ‘vernacular‘, a metaphor implying the social connotations that the iconic white Ford van of the ‘90s represents in British society and a paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context, a city without roads. Vanacular reconfigures a language of identity between that which is considered an accident of fate and that which is invested with intent, both in art and in life.Turk often recycles famous art historical imagery in order to make contemporary societal correlations. Vanacular revives the classic pop-art technique of silk-screen-on-canvas while referencing the works of its most celebrated exponents Andy Warhol and Robert Raushenberg with his 18 metre long Currents (1970). Inspired by Warhol’s famous Death And Disaster series (1962-3), which were derived from photographs of fatal car accidents taken from newspapers, Turk’s Vanacular comprises of a 27 metre long canvas with a selection of sourced images of crashed and/or burnt-out Ford Transit vans. The expressive shapes of the distorted metal, every scratch as if charged with meaning, also allude to the underlying social tensions that led to the 2011 London riots which some of these images come from. The repeated still images silk-screened in a ‘Warhol style’ range of colour combinations produce an animated effect as if to suggest a disaster movie. The orchestration of colours enhances this sense of motion which in turn effects a transformation or change from the stasis of the crashed vans into a new energy or lifeforce. The Transit Disaster series is not merely a pastiche of Warhol’s famous car crash paintings since Turk replaces the American car with an image of a white transit van, a symbol of a disappearing era of working class Britain. Vanacular also relates, albeit indirectly, to the term ‘Fordism’, the notion of a modern economic and social system based on an assembly line of mass production for a mass market. Turk’s Vanacular represents a visual manifestation of urban unrest, which through continuous clashes and disasters is heading towards a materialistic mutation.

Warhol

Silkscreen

On the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale Turk created a site specific project for the Gervasuti Foundation. The installation comprised of a work based on the artist’s ongoing Transit Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and ‘vernacular‘, a metaphor implying the social connotations that the iconic white Ford van of the ‘90s represents in British society and a paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context, a city without roads.

Libido

c-type prints

C-type colour print collage

Photographic Work

Totem

Cross

Red neon mounted on a box behind perspex

Signs

Oedipus

Double Gold Pop Gun

Silkscreen on gold leaf on paper

For Turk, the subject of his art is often art itself: repurposing the heroic movements that epitomized ideals of progress, trading upon their enduring values of cultural capital. Turk’s One Twenty Five is an extension of a recent series of outdoor sculptures that play on Joseph Beuys’ concept of Social Sculpture: the world as a collaborative artwork, where everyone is an artist by virtue of contributing to society. Cast in bronze, Turk’s monolithic nails are set within the landscape, literally puncturing the earth with monumental evidence of a god-like craftsmanship. Transforming this motif into neon – replete with glowing shadow – Turk’s One Twenty Five, now referring to a metaphysical clock, pictures a nail on the gallery wall: simultaneously an armature, an artwork, and a vacancy sign, his own-brand insignia an open invitation.

One Twenty Five

Orange glass nail with red shadow

Nail

For Turk, the subject of his art is often art itself: repurposing the heroic movements that epitomized ideals of progress, trading upon their enduring values of cultural capital. Turk’s One Twenty Five is an extension of a recent series of outdoor sculptures that play on Joseph Beuys’ concept of Social Sculpture: the world as a collaborative artwork, where everyone is an artist by virtue of contributing to society. Cast in bronze, Turk’s monolithic nails are set within the landscape, literally puncturing the earth with monumental evidence of a god-like craftsmanship.

Double Silver Pop Gun

Silkscreen on palladium leaf on paper

Oracle

Bromide (Ilford cold tone) print

Dream Machine

Aluminium Frame, laminated glass, mirror film and paper residue

Aluminium Frame, laminated Glass and mirror film

14 minute film projection, cabinet, candlestick & candle and one knight chess piece.

Film

Parapraxis

Green neon

Flat Tyre

In the early 1960s, Michelangelo Pistoletto made his first mirror paintings. They weren’t really mirrors, as they were done on large sheets of polished steel, and they weren’t really paintings, because the ‘floating’ figures they depicted were photographs printed on tissue (and later silk screens) applied to the metal surfaces. What they were – and still are – was platforms which spectacularly embodied the world (and all its artifice) through their reflection. The same could be said for Gavin Turk;  who not only appropriates historical artists’ works, but their entire mythologies, for his own-brand celebrity, refracting art world legends – such as Pistoletto’s mirror paintings – for democratized progress and use.  Substituting Pistoletto’s casually posed models with his own trademark bin bag – a punk-ethos anti-logo Turk’s previously reproduced in prints and stickers, monumentalised in trompe l’œuil bronze sculptures – Turk literally overlays Pistoletto’s legacy with his own. Maths being a favoured systematology in Arte Povera’s metaphysical quest, Turk revitalizes and trumps Pistoletto’s epitomized art/life merger with the end-game logic of +1. Mirror + bin bag, Pistoletto + Turk = art’s tautological lineage, performative re-enactment, and a certain Darwinian progress of artistic ego. But most importantly +1, by its very essence, is infinite.For Pistoletto, his ‘paintings’ functioned something like real-time theatre: his static figures wittily claiming the reflected gallery space as a stage, and viewers as veritas subjects; his mirrors less objects than mystical portals to a parallel present. Humorously titled Pistoletto’s (Rubbish/Waste/Bag), Turk’s tributes reflect the now as a bridge between past and future – as both consequence and prescience – transposing the gallery to a scene of hyper-consumerist apocalypse, where garbage becomes elevated to masterpiece in the hallowed white cube, and artworks and viewers luxuriantly bask in their own expenditure. Turk’s bin bag motif was originally created in the late 1990s as part of a series of work engaging with themes of homelessness. Transferred to Pistoletto’s visionary 1960s framework – heavy mirror and inky decal today seem a quaintly Luddite attempt at virtuality – Turk offers the overlooked and discarded, redundant and obsolete, as provocatively contemporary proposals. Presented as a single panel, Pistoletto’s Rubbish (2013), simulates the format of an altarpiece: a site of reverence, of stark confrontation, of our cultural values, fetishizations, desires, and excesses; of the world – featuring ourselves, via brand-Turk, as transients in the spectacle.

Pistoletto's Rubbish

Screenprint on mirror finish stainless steel

In the early 1960s, Michelangelo Pistoletto made his first mirror paintings. They weren’t really mirrors, as they were done on large sheets of polished steel, and they weren’t really paintings, because the ‘floating’ figures they depicted were photographs printed on tissue (and later silk screens) applied to the metal surfaces. What they were – and still are – was platforms which spectacularly embodied the world (and all its artifice) through their reflection. The same could be said for Gavin Turk; who not only appropriates historical artists’ works, but their entire mythologies, for his own-brand celebrity, refracting art world legends – such as Pistoletto’s mirror paintings – for democratized progress and use. Substituting Pistoletto’s casually posed models with his own trademark bin bag – a punk-ethos anti-logo Turk’s previously reproduced in prints and stickers, monumentalised in trompe l’œuil bronze sculptures – Turk literally overlays Pistoletto’s legacy with his own. Maths being a favoured systematology in Arte Povera’s metaphysical quest, Turk revitalizes and trumps Pistoletto’s epitomized art/life merger with the end-game logic of +1. Mirror + bin bag, Pistoletto + Turk = art’s tautological lineage, performative re-enactment, and a certain Darwinian progress of artistic ego. But most importantly +1, by its very essence, is infinite.For Pistoletto, his ‘paintings’ functioned something like real-time theatre: his static figures wittily claiming the reflected gallery space as a stage, and viewers as veritas subjects; his mirrors less objects than mystical portals to a parallel present. Humorously titled Pistoletto’s (Rubbish/Waste/Bag), Turk’s tributes reflect the now as a bridge between past and future – as both consequence and prescience – transposing the gallery to a scene of hyper-consumerist apocalypse, where garbage becomes elevated to masterpiece in the hallowed white cube, and artworks and viewers luxuriantly bask in their own expenditure. Turk’s bin bag motif was originally created in the late 1990s as part of a series of work engaging with themes of homelessness. Transferred to Pistoletto’s visionary 1960s framework – heavy mirror and inky decal today seem a quaintly Luddite attempt at virtuality – Turk offers the overlooked and discarded, redundant and obsolete, as provocatively contemporary proposals. Presented as a single panel, Pistoletto’s Rubbish (2013), simulates the format of an altarpiece: a site of reverence, of stark confrontation, of our cultural values, fetishizations, desires, and excesses; of the world – featuring ourselves, via brand-Turk, as transients in the spectacle.

Rubbish

Consume

Mirrors

In the early 1960s, Michelangelo Pistoletto made his first mirror paintings. They weren’t really mirrors, as they were done on large sheets of polished steel, and they weren’t really paintings, because the ‘floating’ figures they depicted were photographs printed on tissue (and later silk screens) applied to the metal surfaces. What they were – and still are – was platforms which spectacularly embodied the world (and all its artifice) through their reflection.

24th January 2014

Blue neon

Icons

GT Paris

Hahnemuhle Photorag

Small Door (Terracotta & Blue)

American Box

An appropriation of Lucio Fontana's "Fine di Dio" (The End of God), this egg-shaped painting is dramatically perforated, its rich painterly surface vandalized as Gavin Turk's initials are subtly cast by the punctured holes, revealing the empty space behind the canvas whilst remitting the painting to a three-dimensional object. The egg, as a heavily charged archetypal sign brings-up notions of beginning and end, the alpha and omega of all things, a closed loop, that which is before speech and thought, the inaccessible unknown. The fleshy quality of the paint surrounding the punctures on the canvas allude to Jesus Christ's stigmata. Titled "Holy Egg", this series of works plays with notions of the authenticity of art as well as the aura of the artwork, alluding to the religious symbolism associated with the egg as well as to a long-standing historical relationship between art and religion, iconography and iconoclasm.

Holy Egg (Buff)

Diamond dust and acrylic paint on canvas

Acrylic paint and diamond dust on canvas

An appropriation of Lucio Fontana's "Fine di Dio" (The End of God), this egg-shaped painting is dramatically perforated, its rich painterly surface vandalized as Gavin Turk's initials are subtly cast by the punctured holes, revealing the empty space behind the canvas whilst remitting the painting to a three-dimensional object. The egg, as a heavily charged archetypal sign brings-up notions of beginning and end, the alpha and omega of all things, a closed loop, that which is before speech and thought, the inaccessible unknown. The fleshy quality of the paint surrounding the punctures on the canvas allude to Jesus Christ's stigmata. Titled "Holy Egg", this series of works plays with notions of the authenticity of art as well as the aura of the artwork, alluding to the religious symbolism associated with the egg as well as to a long-standing historical relationship between art and religion, iconography and iconoclasm.

Alchemy

Painting

An appropriation of Lucio Fontana's "Fine di Dio" (The End of God), this egg-shaped painting is dramatically perforated, its rich painterly surface vandalized as Gavin Turk's initials are subtly cast by the punctured holes, revealing the empty space behind the canvas whilst remitting the painting to a three-dimensional object. The egg, as a heavily charged archetypal sign brings-up notions of beginning and end, the alpha and omega of all things, a closed loop, that which is before speech and thought, the inaccessible unknown.