Installation info: To be shown on a free standing plinth, without ridge on top, unlike in photo. Previously museum wax has been used to balance sculpture upright.  If this is to be repeated take care to avoid applying this near the signature underneath as the wax will smudge it.An object that resembles a smoking pipe found and displayed by the artist in reference to Magritte & Duchamp. This readymade was found by the artist; a u-bend from a drain, a transition point between private and public waste disposal. The seal to prevent contamination of smells and germs between the individual and civic pace, the shape is also reminiscent of a toilet bowl or the philosopher’s tobacco pipe. The male accessory of traditional patriarchal values displayed as a decrepit old tube.

Drainpipe

Ceramic and cast iron

Installation info: To be shown on a free standing plinth, without ridge on top, unlike in photo. Previously museum wax has been used to balance sculpture upright. If this is to be repeated take care to avoid applying this near the signature underneath as the wax will smudge it.An object that resembles a smoking pipe found and displayed by the artist in reference to Magritte & Duchamp. This readymade was found by the artist; a u-bend from a drain, a transition point between private and public waste disposal. The seal to prevent contamination of smells and germs between the individual and civic pace, the shape is also reminiscent of a toilet bowl or the philosopher’s tobacco pipe. The male accessory of traditional patriarchal values displayed as a decrepit old tube.

Magritte

Readymade

Waste

Pipes

Duchamp

Found Object

Installation info: To be shown on a free standing plinth, without ridge on top, unlike in photo. Previously museum wax has been used to balance sculpture upright. If this is to be repeated take care to avoid applying this near the signature underneath as the wax will smudge it. An object that resembles a smoking pipe found and displayed by the artist in reference to Magritte & Duchamp. This readymade was found by the artist; a u-bend from a drain, a transition point between private and public waste disposal.

An object that resembles a smoking pipe found and displayed by the artist in reference to Magritte &amp; Duchamp. This readymade was found by the artist; a u-bend from a drain, a transition point between private and public waste disposal. The seal to prevent contamination of smells and germs between the individual and civic pace, the shape is also reminiscent of a toilet bowl or the philosopher&rsquo;s tobacco pipe. The male accessory of traditional patriarchal values displayed as a decrepit old tube.

Found object on a plinth

Fool

An object that resembles a smoking pipe found and displayed by the artist in reference to Magritte & Duchamp. This readymade was found by the artist; a u-bend from a drain, a transition point between private and public waste disposal. The seal to prevent contamination of smells and germs between the individual and civic pace, the shape is also reminiscent of a toilet bowl or the philosopher’s tobacco pipe. The male accessory of traditional patriarchal values displayed as a decrepit old tube.

A bronze cast of a melon, half painted in realist style with the skin surface of a classic watermelon, the other half blended into a briar wood paint pattern similar to that of an old fashioned pipe like that used by Magritte. The is an alchemy piece. It is the transmutation of a melon into briar wood (traditionally used to make pipes) but then you realize that it is actually made of bronze. The layers of material meaning multiply, until you are no longer sure of what you are looking at. The Artist has made many pieces of art inspired by the street. Cardboard boxes (‘Brillo’, 2002), bin bags in bronze (‘Bag’, 2001) and ‘Nomad’ (a figure in a sleeping bag cast in bronze). All these works are questioning value and status. The melon pieces are quirkier than that, watermelons having saucy, colloquial associations because of their size and succulence. But they are also a vegetable-like fruit often put on the floor outside shops because of their size. An urban boulder. The melon is not indigenous to this country and therefore represents the exotic: the unknown.

Wood ‘n’ Melon

Painted bronze

A bronze cast of a melon, half painted in realist style with the skin surface of a classic watermelon, the other half blended into a briar wood paint pattern similar to that of an old fashioned pipe like that used by Magritte. The is an alchemy piece. It is the transmutation of a melon into briar wood (traditionally used to make pipes) but then you realize that it is actually made of bronze. The layers of material meaning multiply, until you are no longer sure of what you are looking at. The Artist has made many pieces of art inspired by the street. Cardboard boxes (‘Brillo’, 2002), bin bags in bronze (‘Bag’, 2001) and ‘Nomad’ (a figure in a sleeping bag cast in bronze). All these works are questioning value and status. The melon pieces are quirkier than that, watermelons having saucy, colloquial associations because of their size and succulence. But they are also a vegetable-like fruit often put on the floor outside shops because of their size. An urban boulder. The melon is not indigenous to this country and therefore represents the exotic: the unknown.

Food

Trompe L'oeil

Painted Bronze

A bronze cast of a melon, half painted in realist style with the skin surface of a classic watermelon, the other half blended into a briar wood paint pattern similar to that of an old fashioned pipe like that used by Magritte. The is an alchemy piece. It is the transmutation of a melon into briar wood (traditionally used to make pipes) but then you realize that it is actually made of bronze. The layers of material meaning multiply, until you are no longer sure of what you are looking at. The Artist has made many pieces of art inspired by the street.

A bronze cast of a large melon painted to resemble an over inflated liquorice pipe.

This is not a melon

Melons

Sculpture

A bronze cast of a large melon painted to resemble an over inflated liquorice pipe.

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face, displayed in a large vitrine and heated in such a way that through a smoke-filled cabinet it could be detected by an infrared camera.

Smokey Joe

Painted bronze, smoke, infared camera, screen & vitrine

Smoke

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face, displayed in a large vitrine and heated in such a way that through a smoke-filled cabinet it could be detected by an infrared camera.

Automaton

The Artists proof from the making of the photographic artwork

Godot

painted over with oil to give the figure a check jacket, bowler hat and several smoking pipes. In

Godot,

The Artist "re-cycles" a Magritte self-portrait which features an apple - symbol of secret knowledge from the Garden of Eden - instead of a human head. In Turk's interpretation, instead of an apple, on The Artist's neck sits a chicken's egg. A recurring theme in Turk's work, eggs are symbols of new life and new ideas. What ideas even now are hatching in The Artist's mind? What new life/meaning has Turk given to the original Magritte painting? Meanwhile, the title of the piece refers to Samuel Beckett's famous absurdist play,

Waiting For Godot.

Is Godot, the possibly redemptive, possibly fictitious mystery character for whom The Artist also is waiting. (For what? To give him The Answer? Inspiration? A hotline to The Truth?). Or is The Artist, as the title more directly suggests, the nebulous Godot himself? Acquiring even more layers of meaning,

Godot's Day Off

goes further. Here, the egg head is both surreally - and indeed apparently serenely - smoking multiple pipes in a homage not only to Magritte but also Duchamp, both of whom were famous pipe smokers but also Magritte's famous surrealist joke,

Ce N'Est Pas Une Pipe

(This Is Not A Pipe) - a drawing of a pipe which questions the notion of representation. Meanwhile, pipe-smoking itself stands for intellectual contemplation and pausing to think. Gentlemen - especially old fashioned ones - tend to smoke pipes. They also tend to wear the traditional English bowler hat. This bowler hat hints at not only the English intellectual but the English establishment - to which the artist may or may not belong - and also to the English stiff upper lip. The Third Eye in the centre of the bowler hat, meanwhile, subverts this institutionalisation of intellectual ideas with its proposition not only of a psychic window onto the soul but also onto the mystery and the enigma of The Truth.

Godot&rsquo;s Day Off

Oil on C-type print

Eggs

Faces

Godot

Photographic Work

The Artists proof from the making of the photographic artwork Godot painted over with oil to give the figure a check jacket, bowler hat and several smoking pipes. In Godot,

Godot's Day Off

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face.

Cripple I

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face.

Self-Portrait

Masks

Drawing of an anti smoking sign with a pipe replacing the cigarette.

In Defense of Smoking

Acrylic ink on printed paper

Signs

Work on paper

Drawing of an anti smoking sign with a pipe replacing the cigarette.

pipe

Pipes are traditionally utilised as a symbol of patriarchy and intellect – from Sherlock Holmes to Bertrand Russell. In pipe (1991), a smoking instrument is transmuted into a child’s sweet. The work is inspired by the Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe, The Treachery of Images (1929). This employs a similar rebuttal – this is not a liquorice pipe but a jewel-like artwork.