Cave Drawing 2/1/21

Coloured pencil on paperPrint of font

Outsider

Cave Drawing 5/12/21

Coloured pencil on paperPrint of font

Cave Drawing 11/1/21

Cave Drawing 20/4/20

Cave Drawing 29/6/20

Mythology

Cave Drawing 4/4/20 

Cave Drawing 7/11/20

Cave Drawing 7/4/20

Cave Drawing 8/5/20

Cave Drawing 1/12/20

Cave Drawing 10/11/20

Cave Drawing 17/4/20

Cave Drawing 18/3/20

Cave Drawing 19/3/20

Ghost Pop

Silkscreen ink and metallic paint on canvas

Sid Vicious

Warhol

Masks

Self-Portrait

Faces

Silkscreen

A polystyrene carving of a reclining woman lying on a double plinth based on De Chirico's obsessive series of paintings of the sculpture &lsquo;Ariadne&rsquo;.

Ariadne

Polystyrene balls and polymer on canvas

Polystyrene

Sculpture

A polystyrene carving of a reclining woman lying on a double plinth based on De Chirico's obsessive series of paintings of the sculpture ‘Ariadne’.

Ariadne (2006–2014) is a bronze sculpture painted to look like a crudely carved polystyrene approximation

of the Greek Goddess. The Italian metaphysical painter De Chirico used this reclining symbol as an archetype

of classicism in a series of surreal landscapes. By appearing to render her in this pernicious 20th century material, the artist makes a punkish throw-up in the consecrated gallery. In a nod to Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’, he questions value and the history of western traditions through the degenerated male gaze.

Painted bronze

Ariadne (2006–2014) is a bronze sculpture painted to look like a crudely carved polystyrene approximationof the Greek Goddess. The Italian metaphysical painter De Chirico used this reclining symbol as an archetypeof classicism in a series of surreal landscapes. By appearing to render her in this pernicious 20th century material, the artist makes a punkish throw-up in the consecrated gallery. In a nod to Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’, he questions value and the history of western traditions through the degenerated male gaze.

Painted Bronze

Ariadne (2006–2014) is a bronze sculpture painted to look like a crudely carved polystyrene approximation of the Greek Goddess. The Italian metaphysical painter De Chirico used this reclining symbol as an archetype of classicism in a series of surreal landscapes. By appearing to render her in this pernicious 20th century material, the artist makes a punkish throw-up in the consecrated gallery. In a nod to Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’, he questions value and the history of western traditions through the degenerated male gaze.

A bronze cast of a mouldy apple core with pips 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&rsquo;s apple and of course, Eve, have been discarded and tossed away. Now &ldquo;rotten to the core&rdquo;, the fruits of the utopian English garden have become a poisonous symbol of man&rsquo;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.

Inside Outside

Apples

A bronze cast of a mouldy apple core with pips showing, painted to look real.

Installation info: See documents...GT Studio confirms this work requires a 13amp supply. ***DO NOT TURN OFF THE WORK MID SEQUENCE***Sensor sits 11.1 cm from the floor. Power supply and controls to the reverse.An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor.The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet. Jolly Jack tar, (union jack) colonialism. “As it hit the water the fire hissed and the sinking pipe became no more than bubbles. Jim remembered old Sampan, his teeth blackened with betel, who had given him the pipe on the other side of the globe all those years ago; how he’d predicted the fate of that infernal device, saying it would betray him and meet a watery grave. Recalling the image of Sampan only moments later himself accidentally falling off the boat brought Jim to his feet and pointing into the water, the quizzical look on his face changed, his head rolled and from the base of his stomach came a thunderous laugh.” Gavin Turk

Gentleman Jim

Life Sized Automaton

Installation info: See documents...GT Studio confirms this work requires a 13amp supply. ***DO NOT TURN OFF THE WORK MID SEQUENCE***Sensor sits 11.1 cm from the floor. Power supply and controls to the reverse.An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor.The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet. Jolly Jack tar, (union jack) colonialism. “As it hit the water the fire hissed and the sinking pipe became no more than bubbles. Jim remembered old Sampan, his teeth blackened with betel, who had given him the pipe on the other side of the globe all those years ago; how he’d predicted the fate of that infernal device, saying it would betray him and meet a watery grave. Recalling the image of Sampan only moments later himself accidentally falling off the boat brought Jim to his feet and pointing into the water, the quizzical look on his face changed, his head rolled and from the base of his stomach came a thunderous laugh.” Gavin Turk

Automaton

The Sea

Fool

Installation info: See documents... GT Studio confirms this work requires a 13amp supply.  ***DO NOT TURN OFF THE WORK MID SEQUENCE*** Sensor sits 11.1 cm from the floor.  Power supply and controls to the reverse. An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor. The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet.

A maze made from two way mirrored glass.

The Golden Thread

Aluminium Frame, laminated Glass and mirror film

Installation

An ink silhouette of Ariadne in a sleeping bag, based on the paintings by De Chirico

Ariadne in a sleeping bag

Acrylic ink on printed paper

Work on paper

An ink silhouette of Ariadne in a sleeping bag, based on the paintings by De Chirico

A waxwork of Che Guevara based on the photograph famously taken to prove his death.

Alberto Korda’s famous 1960 photograph of Cuban revolutionary hero, Che Guevara, has come to stand for revolution in all its forms. A second famous image of Che, on which Turk’s ‘Death of Che’ is based, was taken in 1967 by the CIA-led Bolivian troops that executed him. For this photograph the soldiers dressed Che’s dead body in his military fatigues and propped up his head to mimic the Korda image. In Turk’s recreation, the artist plays the role of the revolutionary martyr, connecting the political use of Che’s image with that of Marat’s in his previous waxwork, ‘Death of Marat’.

Death of Che (2)

Waxwork & concrete

Revolution

Icons

Death

A waxwork of Che Guevara based on the photograph famously taken to prove his death.

Death of Che

A life size waxwork of the Artist as a tramp.

Another Bum

Homeless

A life size waxwork of Che Guevara in the pose of Warhol’s Elvis and dressed in army fatigues and a beret pointing a revolver.

Waxwork in brass, wood and glass vitrine

A life size waxwork of Che Guevara in the pose of Warhol’s Elvis and dressed in army fatigues and a beret pointing a revolver.

Elvis

Alchemy

A waxwork of the artist as Jean Paul Marat on his death bed, based on the painting of the same name by Jacques-Louis David.

This is a sculpture recreation of Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting of the same name. David was a neo-classical painter who helped swing public opinion for the French revolution. Jean-Paul Marat was a revolutionary martyr who was stabbed to death while writing in the bath (he suffered from a skin disease that was soothed by bathing). In this version, however, Marat is replaced by a waxwork of Turk himself posed in a mirror image of the original paining. Wax figures were first popularised by Madame Tussaud, who began her career as an art instructor to the French royal family guillotined in the revolution. Tussaud won favour with the revolutionaries by modelling wax replicas of her former masters’ severed heads, and even made a waxwork of Marat the same year that David produced his painting.

&nbsp;

Death of Marat

Waxwork in glass vitrine

Appropriation

A waxwork of the artist as Jean Paul Marat on his death bed, based on the painting of the same name by Jacques-Louis David.

A wooden carpenter's 'horse' with a tail sprouting out of one end.

Fitzy

Wood & hair

Animalia

Hair

A wooden carpenter's 'horse' with a tail sprouting out of one end.

A portrait of the Artist from the neck up with camouflage paint.

Camouflage Self Portrait  (a Man Like Mr Kurtz)

Cibatrans mounted in light box

A portrait of the Artist from the neck up with camouflage paint.

Camouflage

Photographic Work

Pop is a waxwork figure of the artist as Sid Vicious in the pose of Andy Warhol's Elvis Presley, which imagined the be-quiffed star as a gunslinging cowboy - the original king of Pop as celebrated by the original "king" of Pop Art. A homage to both, Pop finds Turk adopting the same rebel snarl with the curled upper lip, not as the King of Pop but the dark Prince of punk. While Elvis was a sanitised icon of the music industry given a rebellious makeover by Warhol, Sid was a natural outsider who found himself somewhat accidentally at the heart of pop culture. Both came to untimely and sticky ends, sucked up and spat out by the same system, with a heavy dose of self-destruction thrown in for good measure. Certainly, there was nothing glossy or shiny or bright about the respective ends of these two nemeses. But if Pop is a comment on the nature of celebrity and the inbuilt self-destruction of the star system, which likes its martyrs young and damaged - with not a small nod at the martyrdom expected of artists should they ever hope to see their name up in lights, also - it is also a wry take on the commodification of culture, in which rebels and heroes, artists, art works and icons are reduced to products whose value is determined by the arbitrary randomness of the market. Removed from the mean streets of punk's DIY roots, this Sid Vicious is already a museum object, a historical curiosity in a glass vitrine to be gazed upon at a safe distance. No longer a threat, this Sid Vicious may be pointing his gun, but the only things his piece is firing, are blanks. And what of The Artist? Once regarded as a outsider, has the market rendered Him an impotent and antiquated museum curiosity too? Has the gunslinger been relegated to the realm of cliche, no longer a threat but taken hostage by the very system he hoped to challenge? Is he now responsible for writing his own ransom note? Or is there still a possibility that he may yet lay claim to the mantra made famous twice, first by Frank Sinatra and then by Sid that, right to the end, glass vitrine and all,

end, he did it "My Way"?

Pop is a waxwork figure of the artist as Sid Vicious in the pose of Andy Warhol's Elvis Presley, which imagined the be-quiffed star as a gunslinging cowboy - the original king of Pop as celebrated by the original "king" of Pop Art. A homage to both, Pop finds Turk adopting the same rebel snarl with the curled upper lip, not as the King of Pop but the dark Prince of punk. While Elvis was a sanitised icon of the music industry given a rebellious makeover by Warhol, Sid was a natural outsider who found himself somewhat accidentally at the heart of pop culture. Both came to untimely and sticky ends, sucked up and spat out by the same system, with a heavy dose of self-destruction thrown in for good measure. Certainly, there was nothing glossy or shiny or bright about the respective ends of these two nemeses. But if Pop is a comment on the nature of celebrity and the inbuilt self-destruction of the star system, which likes its martyrs young and damaged - with not a small nod at the martyrdom expected of artists should they ever hope to see their name up in lights, also - it is also a wry take on the commodification of culture, in which rebels and heroes, artists, art works and icons are reduced to products whose value is determined by the arbitrary randomness of the market. Removed from the mean streets of punk's DIY roots, this Sid Vicious is already a museum object, a historical curiosity in a glass vitrine to be gazed upon at a safe distance. No longer a threat, this Sid Vicious may be pointing his gun, but the only things his piece is firing, are blanks. And what of The Artist? Once regarded as a outsider, has the market rendered Him an impotent and antiquated museum curiosity too? Has the gunslinger been relegated to the realm of cliche, no longer a threat but taken hostage by the very system he hoped to challenge? Is he now responsible for writing his own ransom note? Or is there still a possibility that he may yet lay claim to the mantra made famous twice, first by Frank Sinatra and then by Sid that, right to the end, glass vitrine and all, end, he did it "My Way"?

Celebrity

Punk

Pop is a waxwork figure of the artist as Sid Vicious in the pose of Andy Warhol's Elvis Presley, which imagined the be-quiffed star as a gunslinging cowboy - the original king of Pop as celebrated by the original "king" of Pop Art. A homage to both, Pop finds Turk adopting the same rebel snarl with the curled upper lip, not as the King of Pop but the dark Prince of punk. While Elvis was a sanitised icon of the music industry given a rebellious makeover by Warhol, Sid was a natural outsider who found himself somewhat accidentally at the heart of pop culture.