A group exhibition exploring the idea of solitude in today's society

In My Solitude

A group exhibition exploring the idea of solitude in today's society

Fine art society exhibition of white artworks

Monochrome II

Fine art society exhibition of white artworks

Yvon Lambert Paris hosted the first instalment of the group exhibition Ready-Made in New York. Duchamp’s ready-mades were considered as “antidotes to retinal art,” a challenge to the distinction between art and non-art. By transplanting an ordinary object into an artworld context, declaring the banal to be a work of art, Duchamp destabilized not only traditional aesthetic categories, but also the established processes for legitimizing artists and their work. 

This question of the medium and its role in objects’ transition from daily life into to an artistic sphere is central to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Gavin-Turk/F53FAFFEA63869C2">work of Gavin Turk</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Kaz-Oshiro/93600A8C37B6B6A4">Kaz Oshiro</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Michael-Brown/2821B92FC6ADFF87">Michael Brown</a>. With their sustained rapport with classical painting and sculpture, all three play on the divisions between the real and the false Ready-Made.&nbsp;

Their Ready-Mades are abandoned objects whose intriguing and incongruous presence in the gallery inspires a smile: a taxidermied hamster inhabits a now-useless cage. The increasingly frequent practices of this type provoke significant public response, doubtless as a result of the seeming triviality of the objects on display and the apparently minimal presence of the artist – a strong contrast with the works’ strong ideological, emotional, and conceptual charge. 

Featured artists included: Saâdane Afif, Michael Brown,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Jimmie-Durham/77993C51C498AB23">Jimmie Durham</a>, Babak Ghazi, Shilpa Gupta, Sunnifa Hope,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Mike-Kelley/F8380CD1034F526B">Mike Kelley</a>, Koo Jeong-A, Bertrand Lavier,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Guillaume-Leblon/F7C8B292D7D7726E">Guillaume Leblon</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Helen-Mirra/D041932FCCD4DE65">Helen Mirra</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Jonathan-Monk/D1F42E2729ECE56E">Jonathan Monk</a>, Matt O`Dell, Kaz Oshiro,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/David-Renggli/746EBD30777501CE">David Renggli</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Sylvain-Rousseau/4B34EF06DBBC2332">Sylvain Rousseau</a>, David Shrigley, Shinique Smith, Haim Steinbach,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Gavin-Turk/F53FAFFEA63869C2">Gavin Turk</a>.

Ready Made

Yvon Lambert Paris hosted the first instalment of the group exhibition Ready-Made in New York. Duchamp’s ready-mades were considered as “antidotes to retinal art,” a challenge to the distinction between art and non-art. By transplanting an ordinary object into an artworld context, declaring the banal to be a work of art, Duchamp destabilized not only traditional aesthetic categories, but also the established processes for legitimizing artists and their work.

In Me As Him, Gavin Turk turned his gaze towards the most celebrated and celebrity-obsessed figure in contemporary art. The final self-portraits of Andy Warhol, exhibited in London in 1986, provided the visual template for Turk to appropriate in a new suite of screen-printed canvases on the subject of originality and the marketable identity of the artist – the artist in question being both Warhol and Turk.

Gavin Turk has fashioned for himself a career on the subject of fame, the myth of authorship and what it is to be an artist. Like a sophisticated ‘tribute’ band, he has replayed Art’s Greatest Hits in homage to the ‘creative personality’ where invention, endlessly refashioned and imitated has become cliché.

With society’s infatuation with the idea of fame for fame’s sake, it was fitting that Turk should come to take on ‘Andy’, staring out of the master’s final likeness, the camouflage patterned ‘fright-wig’ paintings premiered at Anthony d’Offay’s gallery in London, 1986, just months before the artist’s death.

Warhol’s self-portraits replay elements the artist had ‘copy-righted’ before; a personal way of doing things that has become cliché in the hands of those paying tribute to the Factory style. Taking up residence within the Master’s image, Turk enacted a sumptuous, deluxe re-making and re-layering which reversed the intended purpose by refashioning the cliché into something genuinely ‘artificial’ and, therefore, daringly ‘original’.

The solo exhibition included a performance on July 16th where one hundred artists, curators and writers were invited to the gallery to urinate on four canvases to create oxidisation-, or, piss-paintings.

Me as Him

In Me As Him, Gavin Turk turned his gaze towards the most celebrated and celebrity-obsessed figure in contemporary art. The final self-portraits of Andy Warhol, exhibited in London in 1986, provided the visual template for Turk to appropriate in a new suite of screen-printed canvases on the subject of originality and the marketable identity of the artist – the artist in question being both Warhol and Turk.

Negotiation of Purpose, Grenoble

Negotiation of Purpose (Grenoble)

Hackney artists revisit where they came from in this group exhibition. Held at &lsquo;Amp&rsquo; (now closed)

Back to Hackney

Hackney artists revisit where they came from in this group exhibition. Held at ‘Amp’ (now closed)

a retrospective of the artists work from 1991-2007

The Negotiation of Purpose

a retrospective of the artists work from 1991-2007

The Negotiation of Purpose (The Hague)

Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels