Exhibitions2026Betwixt

Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong is pleased to present ‘Betwixt’ an exhibition bringing together three distinct and recent bodies of painting by British artist Gavin Turk. 

Doors, candles and still life’s fill the gallery, the colour pallete a subtle warmth hue - domestic anthropology defined by Turk ‘as the exploration of the domestic, with the question of value, and the act of re-noticing’.

The works are each a study in liminal states, poised between presence and absence, arrival and departure. They hold a comfort, yet an unsettling feeling – each preserving an action that has just taken place, be it an extinguished candle, a door left ajar, or a selection of quotidian objects set in a scene: something we feel we have seen before, yet something has changed. Here the domestic reveals itself as the orginal site of the uncanny (the unheimlich, literally the un-homely’) where the most familiar surrounds are the ones most capable of estrangement. The works all share a common structure, a familiar image, borrowed from art history or daily life, subtly destabilised until it becomes a threshold rather than a fixed thing, in the manner of Magritte’s surrealist doors, candles and bottles – objects rendered strange precisely through their exactness. 

The exhibition takes it title form the old English word ‘Betwixt’ defined as the idea of being caught between two conditions, a state that Turk has explored for more than three decades now through his interrogation of authorship, value and belief. 

Each work within the series takes it’s starting point from an art historical master, the Candles from the series KERZE, reminiscent of Gerhard Richter’s photorealist candle paintings. The Still Life’s, hold a familiar frame and feel to those by Giorgio Marandi, however the objects in this series are current and domestic discarded packaging elevated by the assemblage and capturing by the artist hand. The Door paintings life size are titled after a number of artists that predate Turk, Duchamp, Richter, Hammershøi, de Chirico with each door holding a different panel configurations.