Installation info: Neon Craft spec:

1 set of (Blue 4) neon numbers in 15mm glass to read "7,201,964,238" height of number "7" 925mm over all spread of installation 8.5m x 1.26m tall (to be fitted onto the frame with cetral height of 1.5m) including 1 off 10/50 and 1 off 6/50 transformers with protection built in. double insulated HT cables, Supports and Electrode covers to suit. See notes regarding internal install parts included in casing for Yard at CCA (June 2015)

First mounted on the exterior of the Bowes Museum’s iconic façade in 2014 for the solo exhibition 'Seven Billion Two Hundred and One Million Nine Hundred and Sixty-Four Thousand and Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight', Turk’s monumental neon sign broadcasts the number 7,201,964,238; the specific median population of planet Earth at the time both the exhibition and the work itself opened on the 25th January 2014 at 6pm.

Set high above the museum’s main entrance, Turk’s sign is a symbolic threshold: inviting visitors to transcend through a fixed point in time, bearing testimony to each individual’s solitude, power, and transient existence as part of an unimaginably expansive whole.

"This monumental neon sign broadcasts the number 7,201,964,238; the specific median human population at the time the work itself opened on the 24th January 2014 at 6pm. Turk’s sign is a symbolic threshold: inviting visitors to transcend through a fixed point in time, a broken clock referring to a historical moment in our exponential growth as a species. Like On Kawara’s date artworks here is a recording of the now (passed), a pause for thought captured in the gas of the neon. Electricity passes through the gas in the tube exciting the electrons which convert into photons that light up. The Neon light itself is a symbol of consumer culture: alluding to the objects of desire beyond it. It’s a hand written sign as if by Mario Merz as part of his Fibonacci series. The geometry and geography of nature repeated in patterned sequences - in plants, seeds, crustaceans and leaf growth. Here encapsulating the human condition. We are one – the individual as part of the masses. The large number equals one." Gavin Turk, 2015

24th January 2014

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