Artworks2014We Are One

'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