In Fact focused on the concepts of representation and the act of referring. The show included works of different media and investigated models of representation through the the act of referencing. 

&nbsp;Seventeen works were presented in the exhibition which aimed to re-question and revive the concept of representation; a subject that had been heavily interrogated since the 80s, after analogies of Simulacra and appropriation became a medium in contemporary art.

Gavin Turk’s contribution, a giant blue plaque, has value only in referencing its creator rather than its own isolated in isolation; the hollow dress titled State of Being by Chiharu Shiota indescribably bundles up a reality that we know exists; and Tracey Emin's photograph Sometimes… questions the meanings we ascribe to concepts.

Other featured artists included: İhsan Oturmak, Bengü Karaduman, Volkan Kızıltunç's, Cindy Sherman, Hale Tenger, and Özlem Günyol.

Installation photo of Cave Rug, 2002 

In Fact focused on the concepts of representation and the act of referring. The show included works of different media and investigated models of representation through the the act of referencing.

In Fact

History of Art is a body of work that illustrates Gavin Turk’s exploration of authenticity, originality and how we value artworks and build artistic reputations. In this exhibition Gavin Turk responded to some of the many artists who inspired and influenced him, particularly in terms of re-assigning or dismantling modernist ideas. 

Turk’s work draws inspiration from specific modern masters – Josef Albers, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, César Balda- ccini, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Lucio Fontana, Donald Judd, Yves Klein, René Magritte and Jackson Pollock. He also created a work in response to Damien Hirst’s contemporary medicine cabinets. Turk has played with the recycling of art history throughout his oeuvre. His responses to other artist’s innovative works play with the way they can be reduced to stereotypes that become their recognisable distinctive ‘brands’. He works with imagery and motifs, often combining two or three artist references in a single painting or sculpture. He then reshapes these art historical ‘clichés’ together with his own ideas to create something new and different. 

Turk’s project doesn’t view the history of art as something that happened, rather as something that continues to happen. He is very skilled at adopting the guise of other artists’ work and even creates photographic portraits where he convincingly mimics their characteristic poses, facial expressions and hairstyles. His imaginative imitations and appropriations are part homage, part deconstruction, where he uses his characteristic ironic sense of humour to engage the viewer. Rather than intended as being merely a critique they are more a celebration of works he has spent time considering. They provoke serious thought into deeper questions about identity, authorship and authenticity and both resurrect and undermine the myths of the old avant-garde.

History of Art  (2)

History of Art is a body of work that illustrates Gavin Turk’s exploration of authenticity, originality and how we value artworks and build artistic reputations. In this exhibition Gavin Turk responded to some of the many artists who inspired and influenced him, particularly in terms of re-assigning or dismantling modernist ideas.

History of Art 

Turk teamed up with Skip Gallery to create Transubstatiation, a one of a kind box of skips crisps, showcasing the tongue-in-cheek nature of the artist’s work. 

Through his staple themes of authenticity, Turk provides a humorous commentary on consumerism. The skips crisps are reminiscent of sacramental bread, which are transformed into the body of Christ through transubsatiation. Turk reminds us that anything can become 'art', transformed by an artist's signature.

Through his classical style, this work allows us to question the very nature of a skip as a place to dispose of rubbish and our relationship to what we throw away.

Transubsantiation

Turk teamed up with Skip Gallery to create Transubstatiation, a one of a kind box of skips crisps, showcasing the tongue-in-cheek nature of the artist’s work.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

‘Arte Povera’ is internationally recognised as the most famous and influential development in Italian art of the late twentieth century. It was introduced as a loose term in 1967 to describe the practices of a number of Italian artists. 

The exhibition highlighted the impact of Arte Povera on the work of some of the British artists for whom it has been a source of inspiration. It shows work by the movement’s key artists, including Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone and Giulio Paolini alongside that of British artists such as Tony Cragg, Ceal Floyer, Mona Hatoum, Gavin Turk and Richard Long. 

The show’s opening in September 2017 marked the 50th anniversary of an exhibition that has become a landmark of the post-war avant-garde: Arte Povera-Im Spazio, held at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa. The exhibition was devised and selected by artist Stephen Nelson and writer Martin Holman, and organised by the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.

Poor Art : Arte Povera

‘Arte Povera’ is internationally recognised as the most famous and influential development in Italian art of the late twentieth century. It was introduced as a loose term in 1967 to describe the practices of a number of Italian artists.

For ICON, 19 artists from Galerie Krinzinger presented their personal icons. Curated by Bettina M. Busse, the exhibition featured 38 works, continuing the gallery’s tradition of large-scale group exhibitions featuring some of the most exciting artists of their day.

The featured works span a wide range of artistic production, reflecting a specific realm of art development in the 20th and 21st century. In some cases, the artists adopted a sweeping approach, Chinese artist Zhang Ding, for example, did not select one figure, but rather an entire art movement of the 1960s “Fluxus” which left a sustained imprint on his own work. 

With the exception of Gavin Turk who, by inviting Joseph Kosuth, an artist who is a personal friend and someone he has exhibited with, none of the invited artists selected an ICON from their immediate vicinity.

Both Gavin Turk and Erik van Lieshout integrate their ICONS directly in their work, albeit in a different way. Gavin Turk and Joseph Kosuth decided together on the selection of works that they are presenting in the exhibition. 

&nbsp;

Marina amovic - John Cage, Gottfried Bechtold - Marcel Duchamp, Martha Jungwirth - Cy Twombly, Erik van Lieshout - Allan Sekula,&nbsp; Zenita Komad - Dieter Roth, Angelika Krinzinger - Man Ray, Ulrike Lienbacher - Maria Lassnig, Maha Malluh - Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Op de Beeck - Peter Doig, Goran Petercol - Julije Knifer, Werner Reiterer - Alfred Kubin, Anja Ronacher - Louise Bourgeois, Erik Schmidt - Richard Prince, Mithu Sen - Sophie Calle, Gavin Turk - Joseph Kosuth, Martin Walde - Paul Thek, Mark Wallinger - Harry Beck, Zhang Ding - Fluxus, Thomas Zipp - Eadweard Muybridge

ICON

For ICON, 19 artists from Galerie Krinzinger presented their personal icons. Curated by Bettina M. Busse, the exhibition featured 38 works, continuing the gallery’s tradition of large-scale group exhibitions featuring some of the most exciting artists of their day.

As part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, The Bowes Museum presented two extraordinary simultaneous summer exhibitions for the young and the young-at-heart. Leading contemporary artist Gavin Turk and The House of Fairy Tales, the imaginative children’s arts charity, inspired symbolic stories of horticulture in these captivating shows. 
 
Turkish Tulips was woven through the decorative halls of The Bowes Museum as an exquisite art adventure. It presented new works by Gavin Turk, in collaboration with a host of renowned contemporaries including Damien Hirst, Michael Craig-Martin, Cornelia Parker, Sir Peter Blake, Fiona Banner, Mat Collishaw, Adam Dant and Yinka Shonibare MBE. 

Interwoven amongst The Bowes Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition delves into the complex and paradoxical story of tulips as the artists mine the rich vein of secrets behind this iconic bloom. The complementary exhibition - The Clockwork Garden – was a bewitching show from The House of Fairy Tales.

Turkish Tulips

As part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, The Bowes Museum presented two extraordinary simultaneous summer exhibitions for the young and the young-at-heart. Leading contemporary artist Gavin Turk and The House of Fairy Tales, the imaginative children’s arts charity, inspired symbolic stories of horticulture in these captivating shows.

Turkish Tulips (Bowes Museum)

Kicking off the Hackney WickED arts festival weekend, Inside Out was a group exhibition showcasing&nbsp;Hackney Wick’s diverse range of artists and talents. Exploring&nbsp;the inside workings of the artist studio Gavin Turk exhibited Gavin Turk's Studio&nbsp;(2017) at the exhibition.

Inside Out

Kicking off the Hackney WickED arts festival weekend, Inside Out was a group exhibition showcasing Hackney Wick’s diverse range of artists and talents. Exploring the inside workings of the artist studio Gavin Turk exhibited Gavin Turk's Studio (2017) at the exhibition.

Art Car Boot Fair 2017 London

The Spring season at Helsinki Contemporary ended with the group exhibition,&nbsp;The Book of the WORD, that brought together 18 internationally acclaimed contemporary artists from Finland, Great Britain and North America. For many of the artists the exhibition marked a debut in Finland. 

The show featured paintings, sculptures and video works from artists such as&nbsp;Maria Chevska,&nbsp;Jukka Korkeila,&nbsp;Liliane Lijn,&nbsp;Pilvi Takala&nbsp;and&nbsp;Gavin Turk. The exhibition looked into the particular area of art making that involves language and was based upon a namesake book that was published in 2018 (Thames &amp; Hudson). The curator was Michael Petry, Texas-born artist and curator based in London for over two decades and (at the time of writing) the Director of MOCA London.

 
Featured artists included: Colin Booth&nbsp;(UK), Maria Chevska (UK),&nbsp;Nathan Coley&nbsp;(UK),&nbsp;Paul Coombs&nbsp;(UK),&nbsp;Elizabeth Croft&nbsp;(UK/NO),&nbsp;Mark Flood&nbsp;(USA),&nbsp;Lukas Göthman&nbsp;(SE),&nbsp;Nicky Hirst&nbsp;(UK),&nbsp;Joseph Imhauser&nbsp;(USA), Jukka Korkeila (FI), Liliane Lijn (USA),&nbsp;Christina Mitrentse&nbsp;(UK),&nbsp;Robert Montgomery&nbsp;(UK),&nbsp;Bryan Mulvihill&nbsp;(CA),&nbsp;Harvey Opgenorth&nbsp;(USA), Michael Petry (USA), Pilvi Takala (FI) and Gavin Turk (UK)

The Book of the Word

The Spring season at Helsinki Contemporary ended with the group exhibition, The Book of the WORD, that brought together 18 internationally acclaimed contemporary artists from Finland, Great Britain and North America. For many of the artists the exhibition marked a debut in Finland.

The exhibition&nbsp;Doublethink: Double Vision’s title alludes to George Orwell’s seminal work&nbsp;1984&nbsp;and offered a reading of alternative thinking methods. 

Doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time and believe in both of them. Artists from around the world show how to develop not just doublethink, but polythink, thinking along multiple parallel or tangential lines at the same time.The exhibition catalogue reflects the changing ways of thinking and communication in arts with the curator Alistair Hicks’ texts and his selection of artworks at the exhibition.

&nbsp;

Featured artists included: Yuri Albert, Nikita Alexeev, Kader Attia, Sarnath Banerjee, Erik Bulatov, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Olga Chernysheva, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Marilá Dardot, Marcel Dzama, Tracey Emin, Merike Estna, Claire Fontaine, Sandra Gamarra, Duan Jianyu, Ali Kazma, William Kentridge, Waqas Khan, Anselm Kiefer, Galim Madanov &amp; Zauresh Terekbay, Marko Mäetamm, Mónica de Miranda, Ciprian Mureşan, Arkadiy Nasonov, Bruce Nauman, Pavel Pepperstein, Raymond Pettibon, RAQS Media Collective, Thomas Ruff, Nedko Solakov, Erdem Taşdelen, Gavin Turk, Keith Tyson, and Yangjiang Group.

&nbsp;

Doublethink: Double Vision (2)

The exhibition Doublethink: Double Vision’s title alludes to George Orwell’s seminal work 1984 and offered a reading of alternative thinking methods.

Doublethink: Double Vision

Proof of Life&nbsp;brought together 100 paintings, sculptures and photographic works that investigate existential questions in a both palpable and profound manner. The presented works simultaneously quote, seduce, irritate, provoke and thematise concepts of moral values. 

The works come from a private collection that has never before been publicly presented in this form.&nbsp;The exhibition&nbsp;presented a precise selection of impressive works by international artistic stars such as Louise Bourgeois, Jake &amp; Dinos Chapman, Anton Corbijn, Tracey Emin, Nadav Kander, Damien Hirst, Daniel Richter and Gavin Turk. 
 
A central work of the exhibition was Turk’s&nbsp;Death of Marat&nbsp;(1998) restaged as a life-sized sculpture in the round. In an impressive manner, the British artist Gavin Turk combines the well-known picture by Jacques-Louis David from 1793 with his own self-portrait. Whereas David was concerned with presenting Marat as a martyr and exalting revolutionary virtues and ideals, with his self-portrait Turk connects the current significance of art with the failure of the ideals of the Enlightenment and of freedom. 
 
Jake and Dinos Chapman used the Biblical account of the building of the Tower of Babel as a parable for the disintegration of all shared cultural values. Damien Hirst contributed a monumental church window to the exhibition. John Isaacs presented a 1:1 adaptation and reformulation of the famous Pietà by Michelangelo made of Carrara marble. 

 
 
Exhibiting Artists: Hilary Berseth, Louise Bourgeois, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Patrick van Caeckenbergh, Jake &amp; Dinos Chapman, George Condo, Anton Corbijn, Thierry de Cordier, Danny Devos, Tracey Emin, Tom Friedman, Line Gulsett, Damien Hirst, Roni Horn, Thomas Houseago, John Isaacs, Sergej Jensen, Nadav Kander, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, Anselm Kiefer, Esther Kläs, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, Alastair Mackie, Christian Marclay, Kate MccGwire, Richard Prince, Leopold Rabus, Daniel Richter, Terry Rodgers, Sterling Ruby, Richard Serra, Andres Serrano, Stephen Shanabrook, Mircea Suciu, Gavin Turk, Jonathan Wateridge.

Proof of Life

Proof of Life brought together 100 paintings, sculptures and photographic works that investigate existential questions in a both palpable and profound manner. The presented works simultaneously quote, seduce, irritate, provoke and thematise concepts of moral values.

EMPIRE II was an artist led satellite project devised and curated by Vanya Balogh for the 57th La Biennale di Venezia.&nbsp;The intimate, immersive film hub space featured three chambers; beginning with an extensive library, engaging in film history and theory; leading on to a single screen darkroom showcasing a sequence of 115 imaginative short films programmed that played out on a continuous loop; and on to the Virtual Reality port, a final imaginary space.

Featuring Turk’s Screen Test (2016), Empire II was an immersive single screen experience with a library, a reflection on the elusiveness and temporality of the digital image, interweaving various trends and approaches to film making. Ranging from animation to cold cut editing, 115 digital shorts were transported from London, via Brussels, to Venice.

Empire II Venice was accompanied by a 260-page, full colour limited edition catalogue, designed and produced by Victor Hotz Studio in Switzerland. This bespoke publication was conjured in collaboration with curator Vanya Balogh, and featured film stills, text and further explorations on the ideas of Anxiety &amp; Empire.

The exhibition was presented at: Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London, England; Cross Lane Projects, Cumbria, England; The White Post, Hackney Wick, London, England; SPEKTRUMberlin, Germany; Quai au Bois à Brûler, Brussels, Belgium; Castello 1610/A Riva dei Sette Martiri, Venice, Italy

&nbsp;

Participating artistis: William Angus-Hughes, Montague Armstrong, Yael Atzmony, Jessica Bailey, Jon Baker, Kerry Baldry, Vanya Balogh, Lorenzo Belenguer, Sooz Belnavis, Vardi Bobrow, Whalley &amp; Bricheno, Megan Broadmeadow, Anita Bryan, Theresa Caruana, Roger Clarke, Laura Liliyana-Raffaella Cogoni, Emily Cole, Live Hazard Collective, Paul Coombs &amp; Gabriel Mulvey, Leito de Courson de la Villeneuve, Richard Ducker, Joe Dye, Spizz Energi, Gordon Faulds, Susana Lopez Fernandez, Valentina Ferrandes, Julian Firth, Glenn Fitzy Fitzpatrick, Gzillion Artist, Maryclare Foa, Mandee Gage, Toni Gallagher, Ray Gange, Warren Thomas Garland, Maria Teresa Gavazzi, Alina Gavrielatos, Ann Grim, Fiona Haines, Miriam Mor Hiedemann, Dannielle Hodson, Birgitta Hosea, Leila Houston, Laura Hynd, Shosh Israeli, Marie-Louise Jones, Vanja Karas, Philipp Keel, Will Kerr, Monika Kita, Dion Kitson, Kate Kotcheff, Kristina Kotov, Tomaž Kramberger, Suzanne Bella Land, Bob Lawson, Ibby Doherty &amp; Ed Linger, Crispin Lingford, MC Llamas, Bobby Lloyd, Jeffrey Louis-Reed, Iavor Lubomirov, Julia Maddison, Lee Maelzer, Roman Manfredi, Nerys Mathias, Jane Grisewood &amp; Carali McCall, Joanna McCormick, Stacie McCormick, Emily McMehen, Andrea Morucchio, Anna Mortimer, Eden Auerbach Ofrat, Michal Ohana-Cole, Nouli Omer, Ekin Onat, Adi Oz-Ari, Sarah Pager, Harrison Pearce, Marco Alessi, Benedict Morrison, Martyn Pick, John Plowman, Danny Pockets, Marisa Polin, Eva Raboso, Annika Reed, Meriliis Rinne, India Roper-Evans, Jim Roseveare, Pascal Rousson, Tracey Moberly &amp; Robbie Ryan, Ella Amitay Sadovsky, Mario Varas Sanchez, Susana Sanroman, Susan Schulman, Rebecca Scott, Ashley Scott Fitzgerald, Martin Sexton, Richard Sharples, Liz Sheridan, Veronica Shimanovskaya, Maya Smira, Steve Smith, Barbara Stanzl, Susan Supercharged, Melissa Alley &amp; Paul Tecklenberg, Taline Temizian &amp; Max Maxwell, Sarah Sparkes &amp; Ian Thompson, Paul &amp; Stanley Tucker, Graham Tunnadine, Gavin Turk, Negin Vaziri, Jessica Voorsanger, Tisna Westerhof, Michael Williams, WhittyGordon Projects, Mark Woods

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Gavin Turk, Screen Test, 2016

EMPIRE II was an artist led satellite project devised and curated by Vanya Balogh for the 57th La Biennale di Venezia. The intimate, immersive film hub space featured three chambers; beginning with an extensive library, engaging in film history and theory; leading on to a single screen darkroom showcasing a sequence of 115 imaginative short films programmed that played out on a continuous loop; and on to the Virtual Reality port, a final imaginary space.

Empire II: Exhibiting The Moving Image

In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy was curated by Turner Prize­winning artist Elizabeth Price (b.1966), which opened at the The University of Manchester’s Whitworth on 10th June 2016, and went on to tour to the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. This was part of a series of Hayward Touring exhibitions curated by artists. 

The exhibition was staged as ‘an austere melodrama’ exploring the psychological and formal power of the horizontal, in a vast repertoire of images of the reclining or recumbent body­ in varying states of weariness, stupor, reverie, grief, death, erotic transport and languor. Installations were designed to create an immersive experience for the viewer, in which works are connected associatively, with ‘the slippery, fugitive logic of a dream’. The exhibition included sculptures, drawings, photographs, film and videos arranged in four loosely threaded sections: Sleeping, Working, Mourning and Dancing.

Featured artists included: Fikret Atay, Becky Beasley, &nbsp;Simon Bedwell, Claire Makhlouf Carter,&nbsp;Edward Onslow Ford, Loie Fuller and The Lumiére Brothers, Henry Fuseli, Richard Hamilton, Gustav Metzger, Katrina Palmer, Gavin Turk, Giulio Paolini Bridget Riley, Jo Spence, Carolee Schneeman and Francesca Woodman.

In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy

In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy was curated by Turner Prize­winning artist Elizabeth Price (b.1966), which opened at the The University of Manchester’s Whitworth on 10th June 2016, and went on to tour to the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. This was part of a series of Hayward Touring exhibitions curated by artists.

In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy (Glynn Vivian Gallery)

For Collection, three contemporary artists were invited to show works within the context of the Metropole’s layered history, creating a dialogue with the hotel’s own collection and museum-like display of antiques, tapestries and objects. Gavin Turk, Nancy Fouts and Joseph Kosuth each presented works that spoke to the hotel’s guest heritage which includes iconic intellectual figures such as Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud and Marcel Proust.

Turk presented Rosy Lee (2013), a provocative mechanical sculpture of a fortune-telling gypsy, veiled in his signature ambivalent play between concepts of identity and authenticity. This belongs to Turk’s investigation of mystic automatons that all bear an uncanny likeness to himself. Cockney rhyming slang for a-cup-of-tea, Rosy Lee is a nod to Turk’s interest in tea and its relation to cultural trade, working class Britishness and, of course, the tradition of reading tea leaves.

In the reception area of the Metropole, Nancy Fouts presents Peacock in War Bonnet (2017)&nbsp;together with a series of her customized Old Masters Paintings, Adam and Adam&nbsp;(2014) and Eve and Eve (2014), an ironical twist on the famous 1528 Adam and Eve&nbsp;double painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

In the Oriental Bar, Joseph Kosuth presents a neon work from his Freud Series titled C.S. #41 (1987), as a tribute to Sigmund Freud, one of the Metropole’s most illustrious guests. Kosuth had been referencing Sigmund Freud since the 1980s and has appropriated, decontextualized and re-worked a number of Freud’s texts in his installations and site-specific works.

Collection

For Collection, three contemporary artists were invited to show works within the context of the Metropole’s layered history, creating a dialogue with the hotel’s own collection and museum-like display of antiques, tapestries and objects. Gavin Turk, Nancy Fouts and Joseph Kosuth each presented works that spoke to the hotel’s guest heritage which includes iconic intellectual figures such as Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud and Marcel Proust.

Art in Art&nbsp;was another exhibition in a series that confronted important areas of life with their perception by artists. These included History, Sport, Economy, Crime, Gender and Medicine. Art provides space for reflection&nbsp;and both stimulates and providew depth to our critical perception of everything that existence entails. Such is the role of art, and this is the kind of art that MOCAK endeavoured to explore in Art in Art.

This collection includes&nbsp;masterpieces, representations of&nbsp;famous characters, specific compositional games and expressions and great scandals. The exhibition did not wrestle with any particular existential problem but rather illustrated a sophisticated&nbsp;semantic game&nbsp;that is capable of dealing with a variety of issues. 

Featured artists included: Elise Ansel, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Rafał Bujnowski, Léo Caillard, Enrique Chagoya, Vuk Ćosić, Oskar Dawicki, Sven Drühl, Edward Dwurnik , Pola Dwurnik, Marian Eile, Roberto Fassone / Valeria Mancinelli, Simon Fujiwara, Tezi Gabunia, Dorothee Golz, Manfred Grübl, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Debora Hirsch, Wlastimil Hofman, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Alexandra Kehayoglou, Jerzy Kosałka, Katarzyna Kozyra, The Krasnals (Whielki Krasnal), Tomasz Kręcicki, Zofia Kulik, Robert Kuśmirowski, Isabelle Le Minh, Anka Leśniak, Leszek Lewandowski, Łódź Kaliska, Marcin Maciejowski, Marcello Maloberti, Shahar Marcus, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Bartek Materka, Yasumasa Morimura, Bjørn Nørgaard, Shinji Ogawa, ORLAN, Tanja Ostojić, Géza Perneczky, Zbigniew Pronaszko, Quayola, Adam Rzepecki, Nicola Samorì, Christian D. Schmit, Cindy Sherman, Nedko Solakov, Henryk Stażewski, Jana Sterbak, Mateusz Szczypiński, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, Mariusz Tarkawian, Gavin Turk, Richard Tuschman, Hans Weigand, Wiktor Wolski, Michał Zawada, Aaron Zeghers

Curators:&nbsp;Delfina Jałowik, Monika Kozioł, Maria Anna Potocka

&nbsp;

Art in Art

Art in Art was another exhibition in a series that confronted important areas of life with their perception by artists. These included History, Sport, Economy, Crime, Gender and Medicine. Art provides space for reflection and both stimulates and providew depth to our critical perception of everything that existence entails. Such is the role of art, and this is the kind of art that MOCAK endeavoured to explore in Art in Art.

‘Cracks in Reality’ was hosted my Marta Herford on the first floor in the Lippold Gallery featuring large works by Gavin Turk and Jens Wolf – artists both born in 1967 whose work, at first glance, appears very different.

On closer inspection, painter Jens Wolf and Gavin Turk, who works with sculptures, installations and drawings, have more in common than the year of their birth. Borrowing icons from the history of art and their language of form, they both use disturbing, destructive interventions to express their ironic, critical comments. 

In different ways, the precise execution of their works indicates a perfection which is, however, ‘cracked’ by means of deliberately added deviations, fractures, ‘faulty’ production or symbols of transience. In their works, Wolf and Turk address authenticity and authorship, and explore how totally new questions suddenly arise when formal aspects are deliberately exaggerated.

Cracks in Reality

‘Cracks in Reality’ was hosted my Marta Herford on the first floor in the Lippold Gallery featuring large works by Gavin Turk and Jens Wolf – artists both born in 1967 whose work, at first glance, appears very different.

Museum Van Loon invited Gavin Turk to curate the exhibition Turkish Tulips. Turk presented a transhistorical dialogue between contemporary art and the history of the Van Loon family. The family already traded with the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) in the sixteenth century. 

These early trade routes inspired Turk to examine the trading route of the tulip from Turkey to the Netherlands. Together with The House of Fairytales, Turk invited a group of fellow international artists to show their work – with the tulip as a main symbol – alongside Turk’s work. Featured artists included Damien Hirst, Michael Craig-Martin, Cornelia Parker, Sir Peter Blake, Fiona Banner, Mat Collishaw, Adam Dant and Yinka Shonibare MBE.

Museum Van Loon invited Gavin Turk to curate the exhibition Turkish Tulips. Turk presented a transhistorical dialogue between contemporary art and the history of the Van Loon family. The family already traded with the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) in the sixteenth century.

Turkish Tulips (Museum Van Loon)

Coinciding with the artist’s major survey show, Who What When Where How &amp; Why at Damien Hirst’s award-winning Newport Street Gallery, Give In transformed Ben Brown Fine Arts into a Museum of Curiosities, with pseudo-archaeological objects in cabinets punctuating the space, an installation cum magician’s trick, and brand new tromp l’oeil sculptures.

Turk has relentlessly challenged notions of value, authorship and identity in his work, audaciously intermingling references both to modern masters, and to himself, in the pieces he creates. Give In played with the modernist framework; the works presented allude to the nuances of language, philosophy and to the Age of Reason and beyond. Paternal art historical references were layered like geological strata: Josef Albers, Joseph Beuys, Christo, Marcel Duchamp, Damien Hirst, Donald Judd and Joseph Kosuth, are familiar forbearers who resonate in his work.

Give In

Coinciding with the artist’s major survey show, Who What When Where How & Why at Damien Hirst’s award-winning Newport Street Gallery, Give In transformed Ben Brown Fine Arts into a Museum of Curiosities, with pseudo-archaeological objects in cabinets punctuating the space, an installation cum magician’s trick, and brand new tromp l’oeil sculptures.

In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy was curated by Turner Prize­-winning artist Elizabeth Price (b.1966), which opened at the The University of Manchester’s Whitworth on 10th June 2016, and went on to tour to the De La Warr Pavilion&nbsp;and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. This was part of a series of Hayward Touring exhibitions curated by artists.

The exhibition was staged as ‘an austere melodrama’ exploring the psychological and formal power of the horizontal, in a vast repertoire of images of the reclining or recumbent body­ in varying states of weariness, stupor, reverie, grief, death, erotic transport and languor. Installations were designed to create an immersive experience for the viewer, in which works are connected associatively, with ‘the slippery, fugitive logic of a dream’. The exhibition included sculptures, drawings, photographs, film and videos arranged in four loosely threaded sections: Sleeping, Working, Mourning and Dancing.

Featured artists included: Fikret Atay, Becky Beasley, &nbsp;Simon Bedwell, Claire Makhlouf Carter,&nbsp;Edward Onslow Ford, Loie Fuller and The Lumiére Brothers, Henry Fuseli, Richard Hamilton, Gustav Metzger, Katrina Palmer, Gavin Turk, Giulio Paolini Bridget Riley, Jo Spence, Carolee Schneeman and Francesca Woodman.

In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy was curated by Turner Prize­-winning artist Elizabeth Price (b.1966), which opened at the The University of Manchester’s Whitworth on 10th June 2016, and went on to tour to the De La Warr Pavilion and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. This was part of a series of Hayward Touring exhibitions curated by artists.