Face/Off is an exhibition of self-portraits, and brings together many works by some of the most interesting contemporary artists over the last few years.

Face/Off: a portrait of the artist

Face/Off is an exhibition of self-portraits, and brings together many works by some of the most interesting contemporary artists over the last few years.

Turk’s Ouvre (Duck) was installed outside the Tate Britain in July of 2002 for six months.

Oeuvre (Duck)&nbsp;was the third of a series of giant eggs. The first of these was a hen's egg, which Turk made in response to being asked to design a coffin. The egg is often interpreted as a symbol of birth and creation, but at the same time it also suggests fragility and mortality.

Turk's egg, commonplace and domestic, in a natural open-air environment, is made comic and surreal by its sheer size. Presented on a human scale, the egg refers back to the artist as creator, and hints at the familiar conundrum 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' It becomes a metaphor for origin and originality.

Gavin Turk: Oeuvre

Turk’s Ouvre (Duck) was installed outside the Tate Britain in July of 2002 for six months.

The New Art Gallery Walsall presented Copper Jubilee in 2002, this was Turk’s first major British solo show since The Stuff Show at the South London Gallery in 1998. The exhibition combined brand new work with key pieces from the artist’s oeuvre.

Displayed works included Nomad, a beautifully crafted painted bronze sculpture of someone in a sleeping bag. There is an incredible tension between the obvious pathos of the imagery and the beauty of the object as sculpture with its sensuous curves and meticulous attention to detail. After it was made, Gavin put the sculpture on the street for the day; in a shop doorway across from his Charing Cross Road studio where he was able to watch the largely apathetic responses of passers-by. 

From its doorway, the sculpture unwittingly collected a pile of copper coins. This had inspired Heads!, an oversized copper coin with an iconic portrait of the Queen. In the context of the Golden Jubilee the work could have been seen as a celebration of national identity. However, it also raised questions about value. Whilst currency might be regarded as a thing of value, coins of such a minimal denomination are often discarded as worthless. 

Amongst the works included in the exhibition were the grandiose Unoriginal Signature, a nine-metre-long Yves Klein Blue sponge signature, Ouevre, a giant fibreglass egg, and Pimp, a painted steel skip.

Copper Jubilee

The New Art Gallery Walsall presented Copper Jubilee in 2002, this was Turk’s first major British solo show since The Stuff Show at the South London Gallery in 1998. The exhibition combined brand new work with key pieces from the artist’s oeuvre.

Second Skin explores the connections between the process of life casting and figurative sculpture. The exhibition also provides an opportunity to compare how casting was used by nineteenth-century sculptors and how it is used today. Historical examples have been selected from a survey exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay entitled ‘A Fleur de Peau’. As the interest in life casting has been revived, The Institute has decided to display the historical pieces alongside sculptures by Duane Hanson, John De Andrea, Paul Thek and Robert Gober, and contemporary examples by Jordan Baseman, Don Brown, Siobhan Hapaska, Abigail Lane, Sarah Lucas, Marc Quinn and Gavin Turk.

In the nineteenth century the use of life casts was a standard part of artistic practice. Casting could, however, be a controversial topic. Although it was acceptable for a sculptor to combine modelling and casting, a direct cast could not be presented as a finished artwork. Sometimes, the polemic became public - the scandal surrounding Rodin’s ‘Age of Bronze’ being the most famous occasion. As well as the casts artists used for their own use, the exhibition will include a small selection of academic, phrenological and ethnographical casts, alongside medical, zoological and botanical ones to illustrate how widely spread the art of casting was.

The interest in realism and life casting re-emerged in America in the 1970s and 80s. The work of Hanson and De Andrea was subject to criticism, as if casting was still regarded as cheating. More recently, works by British artists, like Brown, Quinn and Turk, have allowed the viewer to scrutinise the human face and figure to a degree that is not normally possible, and to muse on the fundamental facts of life and death as well as more transient aspects of contemporary culture - like fame and beauty. Others, like Hapaska and Lucas, have occasionally been tempted by the primal possibilities of human simulacra with dramatic results.

Brought together for Second Skin, the historical and contemporary works will illustrate the diversity of the casting technique, its disparate uses and influences, and will focus on its often-perplexing relationship to sculpture. The exhibition will explore ideas of fragmentation, surface, colour and realism and the effects of casting on portraiture and figuration - continuing a line of inquiry which, for the Institute, began with the exhibitions ‘Return to Life’ and ‘Taking Positions’.

Second Skin has been organised in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and the Museo Vela, Ligornetto.

Second Skin

Historical life casting and contemporary culture

Second Skin explores the connections between the process of life casting and figurative sculpture. The exhibition also provides an opportunity to compare how casting was used by nineteenth-century sculptors and how it is used today. Historical examples have been selected from a survey exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay entitled ‘A Fleur de Peau’.