Frieze Art Fair &amp; Sculpture Park 
13th October - 16th October 2011 
Regents Park, London 
<a href="http://www.aurelscheibler.com/">www.aurelscheibler.com </a> 
<a href="http://www.galerie-krinzinger.at">www.galerie-krinzinger.at 
www.friezeartfair.com</a>

Represented by Galerie Krinzinger (booth D14) and Aurel Scheibler (booth H10), Gavin Turk once again returns to Frieze Art Fair, where he will be presenting a number of works, including “Ajar”, a surreal door leading both everywhere and nowhere in the sculpture park.

Disembodied from any room, structure or building, this painted bronze door, which appears from its peeling varnish, to have been left to the elements from some years, opens or closes (depending on which way you look at it) onto infinite possibilities and nothingness, alike. A playful homage to William Blake’s famous doors of perception, visitors are invited to walk through Turk’s door into the enchanting realms of the imagination and beyond.

Ajar,&nbsp;2011 Series of 5 with 2 APs Painted bronze sculpture Dimensions: 216 x 91 x 68 cms

Frieze Art Fair 2011 (1)

Frieze Art Fair & Sculpture Park 13th October - 16th October 2011 Regents Park, London www.aurelscheibler.com www.galerie-krinzinger.at www.friezeartfair.com

Frieze Art Fair 2011

BBF 7th October – 9th October 2011 Barbican Centre,&nbsp;Silk Street, London,&nbsp;EC2Y 8DS <a href="http://www.bicyclefilmfestival.com">www.bicyclefilmfestival.com</a>

The 11th edition of the globe spanning BFF hits London with film, art, music and parties, all in the name of bikes.

Click <a href="http://vimeo.com/30018563">here</a> to see Gavin Turk and Ben Wilson ride their 4H Bike creation around the Barbican Centre before it goes on display in the foyer from this evening.

4H at The Bicycle Film Festival 2011, Barbican (1)

BBF 7th October – 9th October 2011 Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS www.bicyclefilmfestival.com The 11th edition of the globe spanning BFF hits London with film, art, music and parties, all in the name of bikes.

4H at The Bicycle Film Festival 2011, Barbican

<img title="twenty-en" src="http://gavinturk.com/news/wp-content/uploads/twenty-en-355x229.jpg" alt="" width="355" height="229" />

TWENTY
9th September - 28th October 2011
Aurel Scheibler, Charlottenstrasse 2 (in the alley), D-10969 Berlin , Germany
<a href="http://www.aurelscheibler.com">www.aurelscheibler.com</a>

 

On the 20th anniversary of Aurel Scheibler, the gallery presents TWENTY, an exhibition of works by artists it has shown since 1991 in Cologne and from 2006 onwards in Berlin.

The heterogeneity of Aurel Scheibler!s artist roster is easily explained by his taste for underestimated upcoming artists and overlooked qualities in the oeuvre of the more established. In its first year, the gallery already defined its program with solo exhibitions of Chargesheimer, Öyvind Fahlström, Joe Zucker and Jack Pierson. Scheibler further broadened it by showing Weegee, Mark Morrisroe, Bridget Riley, Dan Asher and the recently deceased Lucian Freud. Alongside establishing Pierson and Anthony Goicolea as household names in the art world, he is one of the first German gallerists to champion the art of Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Gavin Turk. More recently, Scheibler took on board two young British artists, Neil Gall and Tom Chamberlain, and premiered in Germany one of the pioneers of video art, Michel Auder.

In 2006 the gallery opened in Berlin-Charlottenburg with an exhibition of works by Ad Reinhardt and a year later added a second space near Checkpoint Charlie, which today functions as the sole gallery. While Scheibler continues to surprise the Berlin art audience with solo shows of such historical figures as Jackson Pollock or Philip Guston, he never fails to search for new artistic positions with a long-term vision and has recently shown Thomas Rentmeister, Malcolm McLaren, Wolfgang Betke and Michael Wutz. Another important aspect of his work as a gallerist is the representation of the estates of Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Fahlström and Alice Neel.

Aurel Scheibler was born in 1960 in Cologne, where he began working in the art world while still at school and, upon graduating, at the auction house Kornfeld in Bern. Later he gathered invaluable experience in the print department at the New York branch of Christie's and as an assistant in the department of sculpture and painting at the MoMA. In the 1980s he worked for Ernst Beyeler in Basel and from 1984 to 1987 for Michael Werner in Cologne. In 1990 Aurel Scheibler edited the catalogue raisonné of Ernst Wilhelm Nay's oil paintings for the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

Gavin Turk's Cave (Edition) is included in the show, a vacform plastic reproduction of the artist's original blue plaque installation of the same title.

20 Years Aurel Scheibler
Anderson · Anonymous · Asher · Auder · Betke · Blumenfeld · Bragdon · Bruenchenhein · Cain · Chamberlain · Chargesheimer · Crabtree · Factual Nonsense · Fahlström · Freud · Gall · Goicolea · Guston · Hirschvogel · Hirst · Holstad · Hughes · Kalaman · Katz · Lefin · Lindner · Löffelhardt · von Luckwald · McCarthy · Morris · Morrisroe · Nay · Neel · Palermo · Penck · Pierson · Polke · Pollock · Reinhardt · Rentmeister · de Reus · Riley · Robilliard · Saul · Scheibitz · Scheibler · Schink · Schutter · Schwarzkogler · Selekman · Spitzer · Stappaerts · Stauss · Sullivan · Togawa · Turk · Twombly · Voigt · Warhol · Wedding · Weegee · Whiteread · Wörsel · Wurm · Wutz · Zucker

<img title="Cave (edition) small" src="http://gavinturk.com/news/wp-content/uploads/Cave-edition-small-355x293.jpg" alt="" width="355" height="293" />

Twenty at Aurel Scheibler, Berlin (1)

TWENTY 9th September - 28th October 2011 Aurel Scheibler, Charlottenstrasse 2 (in the alley), D-10969 Berlin , Germany www.aurelscheibler.com On the 20th anniversary of Aurel Scheibler, th

Twenty at Aurel Scheibler, Berlin

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Color in Flux at the Weserburg, Bremen, Germany
9th September – 29th January 2012

The exhibition 'Colour in Flux' explores how artists since Jackson Pollock have dealt with free-flowing paint. Works by the most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting will be compared with works by younger artists. Highlighting the exhibition will be new works developed in situ by Katharina Grosse, K.H. Hödicke, Peter Zimmermann, Nicolás Uriburu, Rainer Splitt, and others.

In the late 1940s, the American painter Jackson Pollock ventured a simple and at the same time seminal experiment: he laid a canvas on the floor of his studio and began applying paint to it from above. Bent forward and making movements that incorporated his entire body, he poured and dripped acrylic and ordinary paint across the painting surface. This technique, which came to be known as Action Painting, subsequently inspired entire generations of artists. One began to understand color as a flowing material with specific physical features and to use it artistically. This was consciously done counter to well-rehearsed visual habits and as a new challenge to the senses and the mind.

What followed were innovative concepts that supplemented, fundamentally reconceived, or revised Pollock’s stance. Morris Louis, Sam Francis, and Helen Frankenthaler addressed the basic physical conditions of color in flux in highly different ways. Lynda Benglis countered the “male” gesture of Pollock’s drippings with a more voluminous, “female” version made of polyurethane foam. Andy Warhol satirized Pollock’s floor painting in his Oxidation Paintings. And the American Larry Poons let paint run vertically down canvases in order to apparently bow out of the production process as author. Artists in the 21st century are also taking up this broad spectrum of color concepts. What they are interested in are new, at first glance more investigative, observant, unemotional approaches that in remarkable actions at times tie the flow of color back into everyday life. They work in part with video recordings and performances. In an almost Pollockian snapshot in time, Tony Tassett squirts chocolate syrup into the air, and Patty Chang physically exposes herself to paint being flung through the room in her Fan Dance.

Color in Flux in principle juxtaposes two artistic approaches: color as a means of artistic expression in terms of modernism and the more conceptual, experimental, even antipainterly treatment of color, in particular by younger artists. Yet despite—or even because of—these differences, it time and again comes to references and dialogues among one another, but also to the younger artists deconstructing, ironizing, and questioning their older counterparts. What is striking about this is that similar phenomena can obtain extremely different meanings. In the end, what is left is an energy-laden and captivating contrast of various artistic stances that all have one thing in common: the conscious handling of color, which as material, medium, and carrier of meaning above all turns itself into a theme.

The Kerber Verlag is publishing a richly illustrated catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition. It includes introductory essays by Peter Friese and Raimar Stange, as well as analyses by Guido Boulboullé of more than fifty works.

The featured artists are: Ai Weiwei • William Anastasi • Arman • John M. Armleder • John Baldessari • Willi Baumeister • Lynda Benglis • Patty Chang • Ron Davis • Brad Downey • Max Ernst • Ceal Floyer • Sam Francis • Helen Frankenthaler • Bernard Frize • Christian Frosch • Tom Früchtl • Katharina Grosse • K.H. Hödicke • Kristof Kintera • Kitty Kraus • Franz Krause • Gary Kuehn • Morris Louis • Joseph Marioni • Bernhard Martin • Paul McCarthy • Andreas Paeslack • Roxy Paine • Sigmar Polke • Jackson Pollock • Larry Poons • Gerhard Richter • Dieter Roth • Thomas Ruff • Karin Sander • Sarkis • Kazuo Shiraga • Robert Smithson • Oskar Schlemmer • Rainer Splitt • Christian Stock • Tony Tasset • André Thomkins • Mark Tobey • Rosemarie Trockel • Gavin Turk • Nicolás Uriburu • Andy Warhol • Lawrence Weiner • VA Wölfl • Christine Würmell • Peter Zimmermann • Larry Zox

<img title="SONY DSC" src="http://gavinturk.com/news/wp-content/uploads/Turk-leaning-355x251.jpg" alt="" width="355" height="251" />

Turk Leaning and Painting, 2009
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Color in Flux: Exhibition celebrating the 20th anniversary of Museum Weserburg, Germany (1)

Color in Flux at the Weserburg, Bremen, Germany 9th September – 29th January 2012 The exhibition 'Colour in Flux' explores how artists since Jackson Pollock have dealt with free-flowing paint. Works by the most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting will be compared with works by younger artists.

Color in Flux: Exhibition celebrating the 20th anniversary of Museum Weserburg, Germany

&nbsp;Elgiz 10 at Proje4L/Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art,&nbsp;Maslak, Istanbul 
17th September 2011 – 16th March 2012 
www.proje4l.org

The first museum of contemporary art in Turkey, Proje4L/Elgiz Museum is hosting Gavin Turk with Turkish artists in its 10th anniversary exhibition “Elgiz 10 Istanbul” opening tomorrow.

“Elgiz 10 Istanbul” is curated by Dr. Necmi Sönmez who lives in Dusseldorf and organizes exhibitions in Europe and United States. It will be a reinterpretation of the Elgiz Collection which includes artists as Gerhard Richter, Louis Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Tracy Emin, Gilbert&amp;George along with the Turkish contemporary artists as Abdurrahman Öztoprak, Ömer Uluç, Azade Köker and Bahar Oganer.

Turk will be displaying a wall mounted Turkish rug, Cave Rug along with several other works. These works will be hung on Turks Turkey Foil Wallpaper depicting hundreds of roasted turkeys. This will be the second time Gavin Turk has exhibited in Istanbul after his participation in the 6th Istanbul Biennial in 1999.

Other artists doing site-specific works to accompany the collection exhibition are Burak Bedenlier, Lale Delibaş, Nejat Satı and Iskender Yediler.&nbsp;

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Elgiz 10 Istanbul Exhibition Hosts Gavin Turk  (1)

 Elgiz 10 at Proje4L/Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Maslak, Istanbul 17th September 2011 – 16th March 2012 www.proje4l.org The first museum of contemporary art in Turkey, Proje4L/Elgiz Museum is hosting Gavin Turk with Turkish artists in its 10th anniversary exhibition “Elgiz 10 Istanbul” opening tomorrow.

Elgiz 10 Istanbul Exhibition Hosts Gavin Turk 

Small, Medium, Large at&nbsp;Donjon de Vez, France 
11th September - 30th October 2011

The Donjon de Vez, a private registered historic monument, will welcome for the first time in France an exhibition of 30 international artists to it's magnificent grounds.

Turk has created L'age d'Or especially for the exhibition. &nbsp;A huge bronze sculpture of a door slightly ajar.

This project has been initiated by Francis Briest, auctioneer and president of Artcurial Briest-Poulain-F. Tajan auction house and leader in his area of expertise in Modern and Contemporary Art. &nbsp;Susanne van Hagen, writer, curator and consultant to famous institutions such as the Palais de Tokyo has selected the sculptures of this exhibition.

The environment and the medieval architecture will be used in the scenography; the works, mostly monumental and outdoors will fill the park, the garden of landscape architect Pascal Cribier, as well as the XIVth century chapel.

Contributing Artists: Stefan&nbsp;Balkenhol, Sebastian&nbsp;Brajkovic, Olaf&nbsp;Breuning, Robert&nbsp;combas, Michael&nbsp;Craig-Martin, Jim Dine, Daniel Firman, Patrick&nbsp;Fleury, Laurent&nbsp;Grasso, Jeppe&nbsp;Hein, Carsten Holler, Kcho, François-Xavier&nbsp;Lalanne, Fernand&nbsp;Léger, Thomas&nbsp;Lerooy, Los&nbsp;Carpinteros, Tony&nbsp;Matelli, François&nbsp;Morellet, Hans&nbsp;Op&nbsp;de&nbsp;Beeck, Julian&nbsp;Opie, Yazid&nbsp;Oulab, Arne&nbsp;Quinze, Pablo&nbsp;Reinoso, Gavin&nbsp;Turk, Joana&nbsp;Vasconcelos, Bernar&nbsp;Venet.&nbsp;

Small, Medium, Large at Donjon de Vez, France  (1)

Small, Medium, Large at Donjon de Vez, France 11th September - 30th October 2011 The Donjon de Vez, a private registered historic monument, will welcome for the first time in France an exhibition of 30 international artists to it's magnificent grounds. Turk has created L'age d'Or especially for the exhibition.  A huge bronze sculpture of a door slightly ajar.

Small, Medium, Large at Donjon de Vez, France 

The Bunhouse 
29th July - 28th August. Regular Pub hours. 
Bob and Roberta Smith, Gavin Turk, Sarah Baker, Ben Eine

Beer mats (Or Coasters as they are also known), are a fairly innocuous addition to most bars and pubs. They are as much a part of drinking culture as salted peanuts and beer itself. But, like the local boozer, the beer mat is under threat of extinction. As pubs up and down the country close, we don’t only lose hubs of the community, but the many traditions and objects associated with them. It’s not only tegestologists (beer mat collects), who should be worried, the decline of the beer mat would mean more than the loss of a convenient bit of paper to put a phone number on at the end of the night if you’ve got lucky. If we lose the traditional beer mat we lose a whole world of culture, imagination and dreams. Beer mats for me are similar to alcohol, in that they reflect the good times and the bad in equal measure. The optimism of a great night out and the despair of whatever daily tragedy you care to mention.

When I was asked to organise a project at the Bun House, I knew I wanted to do something which integrated artworks with the setting the gallery exists within, The Bun House pub. I wanted something that would be seen by the pubs regulars as well as the arty types who come by for the shows. That’s where the beer mats came in. The idea is that for the duration of the project the artists beer mats will be placed on tables in the pub along with regular beers mats. Viewers who come to see the project will be directed to the tables where the artist’s beer mats are located in the pub. I love the idea of artists designing beer mats that will actually be used in the pub. I really hope people put their pints on them and that they are the starting point for many debates and conversations. Not just about art, but everything people talk about in pubs. Life, death, politics, football and this very galaxy we call home.

Cedar Lewisohn 2011 
www.bunhouse.com&nbsp;

The Beer Mat Show at The Bunhouse Pub, Peckham (1)

The Bunhouse 29th July - 28th August. Regular Pub hours. Bob and Roberta Smith, Gavin Turk, Sarah Baker, Ben Eine

The Beer Mat Show at The Bunhouse Pub, Peckham

HACKNEY HOARD 
22nd July – 28th August 2011 
Private View: 21st July, 2011 6-9 PM 
GALERIE8, 195-205 Richmond Road London E8 3NJ 
www.galerie8.co.uk

Coinciding with their summer launch, GALERIE8 will be opening their permanent space with the exhibition Hackney Hoard, 22nd July – 28th August, 2011.&nbsp; The exhibition is an inquiry into the value and status placed on contemporary art and the role it plays in society, regardless of its literal monetary value in terms of the materials from which it is made. For this project, GALERIE8&nbsp; will be working with artists Gavin Turk, Adam Dant, Terry Castle, Le Gun artists, Matthew Killick and the Last Tuesday Society and Annabel Tilley.

On the 12th July 2007, whilst re-landscaping their back garden, four residents of Hackney, East London, unearthed eighty mystery gold coins. Further research into the coins confirmed their interesting provenance; American, minted during the late 19th Century and buried by a Jewish man who fled from Nazi Germany in the 1940’s. After several years of investigation into the ownership of the coins, as well as an exhibition at the British Museum, they were returned to their owner – a descendant of the man who buried them. Upon their return, the Coroner’s Court of the inner North Borough of London concluded that, under legal definition, the find was in fact ‘Not Treasure’ – a result that sparked much debate.

The quest to find the proprietor of the coins had provoked much speculation and wild storytelling ensued. Using the narrative and debate that surrounds this issue of ‘what is treasure?’ GALERIE8 and renowned artist Adam Dant have initiated Hackney Hoard, a project that will explore the status of art in popular contemporary culture. The value of art is not dependent on precious materials, as treasure may be, but on this curious triangulation of value we assign between the viewer, the object and the market. Can the value we construct truly be translated into monetary terms? Let the excavation begin.

The artists involved in this project will use the discovery and narrative surrounding the Hackney Hoard as a starting point.&nbsp; Each artist will take apart the subject matter through the implementation of different explorative artistic styles and mediums.

For this exhibition, Turk will be exhibiting his&nbsp;Revolting Brick, 2008, as pictured.

Galerie8 - Hackney Hoard - 22nd July to 28th August (1)

HACKNEY HOARD 22nd July – 28th August 2011 Private View: 21st July, 2011 6-9 PM GALERIE8, 195-205 Richmond Road London E8 3NJ www.galerie8.co.uk

Galerie8 - Hackney Hoard - 22nd July to 28th August

Now in its 15th year the NOAC attracts artists across the UK, from the emerging to the established.

Turk will be chairing the judging panel for the third year in a row,&nbsp;supported by Catherine Lampert former director of the Whitechapel Gallery, Francis Hodgson photographic FT critic and Lisa Wright NOAC 2009 winner.

With £40,000 worth of prizes to be won, artists are invited to submit drawings, paintings, original prints, art photography and wall hung installations&nbsp;by the&nbsp;18th September.

For further information please visit <a href="http://www.thenationalopenartcompetition.com">www.thenationalopenartcompetition.com</a>

National Open Art Competition - Call For Entries (1)

Now in its 15th year the NOAC attracts artists across the UK, from the emerging to the established. Turk will be chairing the judging panel for the third year in a row, supported by Catherine Lampert former director of the Whitechapel Gallery, Francis Hodgson photographic FT critic and Lisa Wright NOAC 2009 winner. With £40,000 worth of prizes to be won, artists are invited to submit drawings, paintings, original prints, art photography and wall hung installations by the 18th September.

National Open Art Competition - Call For Entries

Down Stairs, a new contemporary art gallery for Herefordshire, has opened at Great Brampton House.

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition is Heartlands, a collection of work by 14 established and emerging artists, working in different mediums but united by their interest in the countryside and its relationship with British national identity.

Appearing in the grounds at Great Brampton House will be Gavin Turk’s internationally-acclaimed Oeuvre (Guinea Fowl), the last in his giant birds’ eggs series.

The house’s new owner Martin Miller will also present Metromorphosis, six of his own new sculptural installations located in the gallery and grounds, which explore the value of wit, sarcasm and wordplay.

The exhibition runs until July 31, 12 noon - 5 pm Wednesday to Sunday, and by appointment. For more details visit the <a href="http://downstairsgallery.co.uk/wp/?page_id=8">website</a>.&nbsp;

Oeuvre (Guinea Fowl) at Great Brampton House, Hereford (1)

Down Stairs, a new contemporary art gallery for Herefordshire, has opened at Great Brampton House. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition is Heartlands, a collection of work by 14 established and emerging artists, working in different mediums but united by their interest in the countryside and its relationship with British national identity. Appearing in the grounds at Great Brampton House will be Gavin Turk’s internationally-acclaimed Oeuvre (Guinea Fowl), the last in his giant birds’ eggs series.

Oeuvre (Guinea Fowl) at Great Brampton House, Hereford

&nbsp;4H is an invention by Turk and designer Ben Wilson, allowing four people to ride unicycles as a community. Designed for the View Tube in East London, next to the Olympic Park, 4H has been made as part of 'Bicycle Wheel', curated by Alice Sharp for View Tube Art as part of Create 11 Festival and is open to ride 11am - 5pm on Saturday&nbsp;2nd &amp; Sunday 3rd July at the View Tube. For more information visit&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theviewtube.co.uk/">www.theviewtube.co.uk</a>

As part of the festival, Turk will also be taking part in an evening of talks at the View Tube discussing the creation of his bike project 4H, along with the future of public art in East London. &nbsp;For more information visit <a href="http://createlondon.org/events/brief-encounters-the-future-of-public-art-in-east-london.html">Create</a>.

&nbsp;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5xgNh629HI&amp;feature=autoplay&amp;list=ULL7JsLU9trFg&amp;index=1&amp;playnext=1 Film produced and edited by Emma Crouch

Presenting the 4H Bicycle Project - Open to Ride (1)

 4H is an invention by Turk and designer Ben Wilson, allowing four people to ride unicycles as a community. Designed for the View Tube in East London, next to the Olympic Park, 4H has been made as part of 'Bicycle Wheel', curated by Alice Sharp for View Tube Art as part of Create 11 Festival and is open to ride 11am - 5pm on Saturday 2nd & Sunday 3rd July at the View Tube. For more information visit www.theviewtube.co.uk

Presenting the 4H Bicycle Project - Open to Ride

&nbsp;ART CAR BOOT FAIR - 12-6PM SUNDAY 19TH JUNE OLD TRUMAN BREWERY, 146 BRICK LANE, LONDON E1 ENTRY £3

Now in its seventh year and returning for its most creative event yet, the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair announces an enviable line up of talented artists, fashion designers and fabulous performers.

This year Gavin will be amongst 60 other favorite booters selling works including Sir Peter Blake, Bob and Roberta Smith, Pam Hogg, David David, Billy Childish, Cedric Christie, Jamie Kelsey-Fry, Jessica Albarn, Lana Citron, Nick Reynolds, Pure Evil, Pete Fowler and many more....

Browsing for art bargains is not the only attraction of the day, with delicious food and&nbsp;drink courtesy of St John’s Bread and Wine’s famous ox-heart buns and the Southampton Arms, along&nbsp;with entertainment from the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club and A Band on a Car, plus lots of opportunities to get stuck into some artistic endeavours of your own.

For more information visit &nbsp;<a href="http://www.artcarbootfair.com">www.artcarbootfair.com</a>.

Art Car Boot Fair, Brick Lane, London - Sunday 19th June (2)

 ART CAR BOOT FAIR - 12-6PM SUNDAY 19TH JUNE OLD TRUMAN BREWERY, 146 BRICK LANE, LONDON E1 ENTRY £3 Now in its seventh year and returning for its most creative event yet, the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair announces an enviable line up of talented artists, fashion designers and fabulous performers.

Art Car Boot Fair, Brick Lane, London - Sunday 19th June

&nbsp;GAVIN TURK'S FIRST PERMANENT PUBLIC SCULPTURE 'NAIL' UNVEILED AT ONE NEW CHANGE, CITY OF LONDON

For his first permanent public sculpture, Turk takes an oversized cast bronze nail and plants it outside Jean Nouvel’s One New Change, the most radical new addition to the City of London.

Interview with Louisa Buck:

What made you choose an oversized nail as the subject for this sculpture?

The nail fitted for me because it’s a symbolic object that you can attach meanings to: it’s a floating signifier that can stand in place of things. It’s almost like something that might appear in dreams, a kind of psychoanalytical object. It’s immediately recognizable, although due to its scale if you get&nbsp;close to it you won’t be able to see what it is, it becomes abstract and you’ll only really be able to see it at a distance. &nbsp;It was also to do with being asked to get involved in an architectural exercise and thinking about architecture and construction and, within that, the nail itself. I don’t think nails would have had much of a role in the making of this building!

So it’s quite nostalgic in a way? It’s totally nostalgic!&nbsp;

Also the fact that the nail is coming out of the ground is a sign that maybe something else&nbsp; - a larger piece of wood or material&nbsp; - was being pinned by that nail and has now been removed, so it&nbsp;almost talks about the space around the thing itself and the nail becomes like a kind of gap or hole.

Is it based on any particular kind of nail? 

In fact it’s a nail for wood but I see it as an archetype, the most generalized form of nail. I want the viewer to feel that they can understand it in their own way – that they can understand it more generally rather than having to feel specific about it. Had it been, say, a square nail for a floorboard, a horseshoe nail&nbsp;or an upholstery tack it’s particular purpose might stop you from being able to think more widely about it.&nbsp; It’s function is to be a nail and nothing else.

Is it important that this is a rusty nail and so appears to carry a previous history?

The rustiness talks about the use and function of the thing itself. It implies that it has already been used and so now is not that useful. If it had been a newish nail it would have been more about its potential use, whereas by being already rusty it can only get more rusty still. The fact of it looking like its been there for longer than anything else in the surrounding area offsets against the new modern glass building; and I was also interested in the idea of involving a natural process&nbsp; to suggest the idea of the elements interfering with a man- made thing.

How did you decide the scale? 

I wanted it to be big enough so there’s a point where you come into contact with it, you can touch it&nbsp; but you can’t see the whole sculpture. It vanishes as a nail and it just becomes a tree, a kind of organic pole or column where you can only see the intricate surface. It has a kind of Claes Oldenberg slapstick comedy to it as well, just enlarging the size of something has the effect of miniaturizing everything else around it:&nbsp; there’s a kind of comic element to it, it’s possible to imagine a huge hammer&nbsp;banging it in.

You’ve cast other everyday objects in bronze - apple cores, spent matches, dustbin bags. By casting the most ordinary of ordinary nails in bronze are you playing with and off the whole art historical heritage of such a grand monumental medium? 

I think that Nail is quite self consciously a sculpture. What I tend to do is cast something in bronze and then paint it back to look like the object that it formerly was,&nbsp;whereas in this case I’m creating this nail in bronze then patinating it using a heat process and various ferric patinas to make it look like a rusty nail. In itself this is a process that’s developed for putting things outside, a bonded surface which will keep it looking rusty - although its not going to rust any more. I’m not making it out of Corten steel like an Antony Gormley or a Richard Serra sculpture where the steel rusts to a surface and then seals it,&nbsp;because the rust would then be at a natural, small scale. What I wanted was to present rust on a large scale, so that the rust as well as the nail is blown up.

The nail also has a very specific Christian connotations, was this a factor in its conception? 

It’s certainly an obvious point of reference and it may be a route into thinking about the piece, but I’m not necessarily talking about that. Of course I am very, very aware and conscious of St Paul’s and to do anything in this part of the city has to take the cathedral into consideration and to have a relationship with it. There was also a real concern about sightlines and looking through the building and still being able to see the cathedral and so on a formal level I found myself thinking about something tall and thin which could be positioned on the outside of the building. In a way it’s like a big marker to the site, saying ‘I am here’.

This is your first permanent outdoor public sculpture, did you approach it differently from your other work?

It is a very hard thing to do to make a successfully functioning public sculpture. You can either make something that’s acutely local and specific and part of the education of an area, or maybe you&nbsp;make something so abstract that everyone is equally unable to recognize it. I suppose I’ve done something in the middle: I’ve made something that is abstract when you are close by, but when you get further away you might recognize it as a giant nail. Quite often what&nbsp;happens is that people take a smaller sculpture and then blow it up really large to make a public sculpture - I took a rusty nail that was already made and I blew it up really big and hopefully that direct approach can be communicated to the person who recognizes that it is a nail. There’s one point where, at its slight 5ºangle, the nail seems to pin the building to the ground:&nbsp; the building has been described as some sort of stealth bomber and I like the idea that the nail is holding it down.

Find Turk's Nail at the entrance of <a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&amp;q=new+change+street&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;z=16">One New Change, New Change Street, London, EC4M 9AF.</a>&nbsp;

Introducing Turk's First Permanent Public Sculpture (1)

 GAVIN TURK'S FIRST PERMANENT PUBLIC SCULPTURE 'NAIL' UNVEILED AT ONE NEW CHANGE, CITY OF LONDON For his first permanent public sculpture, Turk takes an oversized cast bronze nail and plants it outside Jean Nouvel’s One New Change, the most radical new addition to the City of London. Interview with Louisa Buck: What made you choose an oversized nail as the subject for this sculpture?

Introducing Turk's First Permanent Public Sculpture

&nbsp;Water has a great esoteric significance as the source of life. It is the matrix in the form of amniotic fluid and primordial water that preserves, and is the beginning of life. In ancient cosmologies water, as a primordial component, is a vital principle understood as a means of regeneration".

What makes the fountains so special? Their style or the water flowing through them? ‘Fountain Show’, Reggio Emilia, presents the work of 11 internationally renowned artists, invited by dispari&amp;dispari project to build a fountain. This is not exactly a themed group show, but rather a work in progress that that will define the very concept of the exhibition during the opening days. ‘Fountain Show’ is a project that has developed over several months through conversations with the invited artists, who have been asked to reflect on the possible styles and values, perhaps even Utopian, of fountains in contemporary society. - Steven Claydon, Flavio Favelli, Peter Goi, Brian Griffith, Thomas Kilpper, Erik Van Lieshout, Katrin Plavcak, Cullinan Richards, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Gavin Turk, Alterazioni Video and Klaus Weber.

This device [that of a fountain], which has historically accompanied humanity in all its’ progress, has undergone a constant process of transformation that slowly changes its’ form and valor in a continuous alteration of its’ roles. For example between its’ possible social function, collecting and distributing water, as architectural function or as design element throughout a city. The presented works, many of them made especially for the exhibition, will be installed in the exhibitions’ space - as if an outdoor garden, and will welcome and entertain the audience with fantastic water games and peculiar sounds. Hair Fountains, organic sculptures, installation, video installation, paintings and drawings are just some of the fountains both real and not real that are at the heart of the exhibition.

The exhibition Fountain Show opens the 7th May and will be open to the public until September 18, 2011.

For more information about times and opening days please visit www.dispariedispari.org

Fountain Show at Dispari & Dispari, Italy (1)

 Water has a great esoteric significance as the source of life. It is the matrix in the form of amniotic fluid and primordial water that preserves, and is the beginning of life. In ancient cosmologies water, as a primordial component, is a vital principle understood as a means of regeneration".

Fountain Show at Dispari & Dispari, Italy

Gavin Turk to give Printmaking Lecture at The London Original Print Fair

The London Original Print Fair will present a Printmaking Lecture as part of the 26th Print Fair. &nbsp;"Talking Turk‟ will feature artist Gavin Turk in conversation with art critic Louisa Buck on Tuesday 19 April 2011.&nbsp; The lecture will be held in the John Madejski Fine Rooms at the Royal Academy of&nbsp;Arts.

Turk, whose work has always dealt with issues of democracy and authorship in art, has increased&nbsp;his printmaking output in recent times.&nbsp; As well as generating his own editions, he has&nbsp;commissioned a print portfolio “The House of Fairytales Print Portfolio” from a group of leading&nbsp;British artists.&nbsp; He will discuss methods and importance of printmaking in his work and release a&nbsp;new print made exclusively for the Fair 'Fright Wig Green' (2011). &nbsp;

The longest-running specialist print fair in the world, the London Original Print Fair had only sixteen&nbsp;exhibitors when it launched in 1985.&nbsp; For the 2011 event there will be over fifty exhibitors.

Works on sale range from as little as £100 to over £100,000, from etchings by Canaletto and&nbsp;engravings by Hogarth, to the works of established contemporary artists such as Peter Blake and&nbsp;David Hockney.&nbsp; Over the years printmaking has become central to the work of leading&nbsp;contemporary artists, such as Richard Hamilton, Marc Quinn and Gary Hume.&nbsp; Meanwhile, prints&nbsp;from the Royal Academy Schools and the Royal College of Art will offer an opportunity to buy work&nbsp;by emerging artists. For the first time in its history the Fair is delighted to host the Royal Academy Schools, who will&nbsp;showcase the latest work from the print department. Eileen Cooper RA, Head of Printmaking, says:&nbsp;“Over the past two years we have been inviting artists, some of whom are Royal Academicians, to work with us to produce high-quality prints. They come to our print workshops and work side by side with our students to produce a wide variety of limited edition prints, some of which will be exhibited at 2011’s Fair. These co-publications help raise funds to support students.” Exhibitors who have shown since the Fair began include: Christopher Mendez (Old Master) and&nbsp;Andrew Edmunds, London‟s leading specialist in caricature prints, Picasso expert Frederick&nbsp;Mulder, (Old Masters and Modern), William Weston (Modern French), Gordon Samuel of Osborne&nbsp;Samuel and Hilary Gerrish (Modern British).

Helen Rosslyn, Fair Organiser says: “One of the joys of this Print Fair is that it embraces art of all periods. Many visitors comment on the excitement of coming to see contemporary prints and discovering a seventeenth century etching for just a few hundred pounds on the next-door stand. We have chosen this year’s Fair image (A detail from Grayson Perry’s ‘Map of Nowhere’) in recognition of the importance of old master prints to some of today’s finest printmakers”.

"The Fair has really helped to bring more awareness to printmaking and its importance in the working lives of artists such as Ana Maria Pacheco,‟ says Susan Pratt of Pratt Contemporary.

Falling this year during the week preceding Easter, the Fair has organised an exciting programme&nbsp;of talks, demonstrations and children‟s workshops, made possible by the generous support of&nbsp;Towry, the Wealth Advisers. Andrew Fisher, CEO of Towry says: "We are delighted to become associated with this event and share their ambition to bring art alive, by explaining what prints are, demonstrating how they are made and encouraging children to make their own”.&nbsp; The programme&nbsp;will include a print demonstration by artist Tom Hammick&nbsp; (past winner of the RA Summer&nbsp;Exhibition Printmaking Prize), guided tours by venerable printmaker Norman Ackroyd and a Young&nbsp;Collectors‟ Evening with tour by artist Adam Bridgland and TAG Fine Arts.

The full list of the exhibitors and an events programme will be released in the lead up to the Fair.

Listings information: 
The London Original Print Fair 2011 
Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1 
www.londonprintfair.com

Fair Opening Hours: 
Tuesday and Wednesday 10am – 9pm 
Thursday 10am – 6pm

Fair Admissions: 
Ticket £10 inc. catalogue 
Concessions £7 inc. catalogue 
Free to Friends of the RA 
Catalogue £7 
Catalogue for friends &amp; corporate £5

The London Original Print Fair at Royal Academy of Arts (1)

Gavin Turk to give Printmaking Lecture at The London Original Print Fair The London Original Print Fair will present a Printmaking Lecture as part of the 26th Print Fair.  "Talking Turk‟ will feature artist Gavin Turk in conversation with art critic Louisa Buck on Tuesday 19 April 2011.  The lecture will be held in the John Madejski Fine Rooms at the Royal Academy of Arts.

The London Original Print Fair at Royal Academy of Arts

Psychedelica Gala 
The ICA 
29th March 2011

Gavin Turk is amongst other celebrated artists including Damien Hirst, Ai Weiwei and Jake and Dinos Chapman&nbsp;taking part in the London Institute of Contemporary Arts’&nbsp;Psychedelica Gala. These artists have donated a range of bicycles to benefit the annual fundraising ICA Gala on March 29, 2011. The theme for this year’s ICA event is “Psychedelic,” and there will be performances and art installations, and Sotheby’s live and silent auctions. &nbsp;All lots are available for preview from 23-27 March in the Upper Galleries.

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Psychedelica Gala at The ICA (1)

Psychedelica Gala The ICA 29th March 2011

Psychedelica Gala at The ICA

Dreams Freud Museum

Open: &nbsp;3rd March - 10th April 2011

An exhibition inspired by dreams, the subconscious and aspects of Sigmund and Anna Freud's lives and theories, by 60 printmaking artists associated with the studio East London Printmakers.&nbsp;&nbsp;The works on show will consist of 2D prints, installation, sculpture, moving image, artist books and printed textiles, many of which will be woven into the permanent display of the Freud Museum.

The exhibits include prints by Marcelle Hanselaar, Fabio Coruzzi, Chris Pig, Wuon Gean Ho (Printmaker’s Council Prize UK 2009), Katie Jones (Birgit Skiold Memorial Trust Award 2010), Sumi Perera (Best Overall Book Prize and the Portnall Award, Society of Bookbinders 2009) and guest artists Dexter Dalwood&nbsp;and Gavin Turk.

Dreams, East London Printmakers Group Show at Freud Museum (2)

Dreams Freud Museum Open:  3rd March - 10th April 2011 An exhibition inspired by dreams, the subconscious and aspects of Sigmund and Anna Freud's lives and theories, by 60 printmaking artists associated with the studio East London Printmakers.  The works on show will consist of 2D prints, installation, sculpture, moving image, artist books and printed textiles, many of which will be woven into the permanent display of the Freud Museum.

Dreams, East London Printmakers Group Show at Freud Museum

&nbsp;Before The World Was Round 
Galerie Krinzinger, Seilerstatte 16, A-1010 Vienna, Austria

Private View: 7pm 24th February 2011 
Open: &nbsp;24th February - 26th March 2011

Looking through the wrong end of a telescope at a mirror: the sailor at sea gazing at the endless horizon looking for land. The reflection both tiny and far away and yet up close and familiar and endlessly repeating. The energy and exuberance dancing from these colourful pieces celebrating the confident denial of originality. Steeped in recycling and rhetoric the work plays with the tragedy and abject nihilism of a culture in search of an identity. The UK’s once proud island of sailors, warriors, farmers and traders reduced to ‘whitevanman’ and wannabe revolutionary radical. British heritage objectified to cliché and caricature by the residual tourism industry, deconstructed by Punk and subsumed by the American cultural tsunami surfed so adeptly by Warhol. To lighten the journey, the quirky surrealist sensibility of the Europeans offers the artist a submarine to explore the depths of this capitalist ocean like a contemporary Jules Verne.

The title of the show comes from an image at its heart of a map of the world. This one traced in the lines and patterns of peeling paint as if on a cell wall. The nation of sailors reduced to a prison full of supermarket shoppers. The tapestry of the flattened global map created from pieces of refuse. The detritus of our consumer culture. Most works in the show play with the transcription of dimensions, 3D to 2D or vice versa. The surface to the form or the form to the surface – the contents lost in brand packaging.

This exhibition is full of new works made in the last six months punctuated with pieces from 2003 to 2008. British Culture may have lost its manufacturing industry but the artists studio is alive with technical pyrotechnics and pirouettes. The art reduced to a pile of Ash (2008) about the amount of mass in a human form. The deathly theme permeates the work with the detritus of casualty and accident evident in the transitvan crashes - Transit Disaster Red (2010), as the pre-technological working class symbol is given the Warhol gaze. The frustrated evidence of a revolution that never occurred. Social justice and liberation captured like an insect in amber as a London Brick Missile (2010) is given the artists signature painted&nbsp; bronze treatment. The Beach (2010) is a rubbing from a pavement before the people rise up to reveal the sand beneath.&nbsp; The desert island beneath the streets of Britains surface civilized urban land.&nbsp; The absurdly popular tourist pastime of rubbing brasses or memorial plaques in cathedrals reduced to the street art culture that the British tourist industry increasingly maps onto its itinery like the desperate act of a youth with a spraycan. The detritus of the street is again given iconic stature through the painted bronze iconography of Pavement (2008) as a section of broken concrete pavement is immortalized in the bronze nectar of Art and given a surface skin of oil paint eye trickery.

What you see is what you don’t see is a recurring theme in Turk’s work. In this age of screens, Leon Battista Alberti De pictura (1435), where he famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window, is particularly poignant. These pieces are full of games around perception. Looking at surfaces but seeing metaphors. The audience thinking one reality but that on closer inspection of the materials proves to be a trick of the mind. Why turn a brick into a bronze brick and turn it back into a real brick through paint? Only if the artist wants to mess with perception, innocence and danger, density and texture. The eye weighs up what it is perceiving&nbsp; as a game of sensory and philosophical gymnastics. When is a Warhol Not a Warhol? When it has the British Turk treatment. Surface is most played with in the series of Fresh Window pieces - a droll take on the kinky Duchamp leather bound Fresh Widow sculpture from 1920 . In these pieces you are given the Rhetoric of a Window but the surface of a painting with no illusion except the frame.

The base clay clodding the soil of Englands Green and Pleasant land is used as a modeling material with exquisite sculptures of iconic objects. A small matchbox, an apple core, a toilet roll, all formerly given High Art status in painted bronze is now made of the humblest of materials.

This basic sculptors material forms the substance of the room En Face filled with the most violent of Turks works. These form the evidence from a series of performances from 2009 where the Artist invited the audience to resculpt slip clay casts of his head. The resulting images are bashed and torn and disfigured as the natural response of an audience of all ages, cultures and intelligences was to destroy and corrupt rather than decorate and embellish. A revealing social experiment underpinning Turks thesis that contemporary British culture is still Punk at heart. Recycling like a stuck record as the radical is consumed into the mainstream. The show could equally well have been titled Fuit Hic - the Van Eyck reference on the brick wall. Kilroy wos ‘ere.

Before The World Was Round, Galerie Krinzinger Solo Show (1)

 Before The World Was Round Galerie Krinzinger, Seilerstatte 16, A-1010 Vienna, Austria Private View: 7pm 24th February 2011 Open:  24th February - 26th March 2011

Before The World Was Round, Galerie Krinzinger Solo Show

The House of Fairy Tales presents, 
The Story So Far... 
68 St John Street, Clerkenwell, EC1M 4DT 
 
Private View: 6-8pm Friday 18th February 2011 
Open: &nbsp;Friday 10am til 8pm 18th - Sunday 20th February 2011

Our dear friends at the House of Fairy Tales have a pop up exhibition opening next Friday. Get yourselves down there to see a whole host of work by many wonderful artists including Gavin Turk.&nbsp;

The Story So Far, A House of Fairy Tales Exhibition... (1)

The House of Fairy Tales presents, The Story So Far... 68 St John Street, Clerkenwell, EC1M 4DT Private View: 6-8pm Friday 18th February 2011 Open:  Friday 10am til 8pm 18th - Sunday 20th February 2011 Our dear friends at the House of Fairy Tales have a pop up exhibition opening next Friday. Get yourselves down there to see a whole host of work by many wonderful artists including Gavin Turk. 

The Story So Far, A House of Fairy Tales Exhibition...

<div>Me As He</div>

<div>Patricia Low Contemporary, Parkstrasse 3780, Gstaad, Switzerland</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>Private View &amp; Artist Talk: 6pm 17th February 2011</div>

<div>Open: &nbsp;18th February - 30th April 2011</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>Patricia Low Contemporary is pleased to present Me As He, a solo exhibition of Gavin Turk. In Turk’s works from his Warhol, Elvis, Gavara, and new Transit Disaster series, themes of authorship, authenticity, and celebrity are mere starting points for seduction and its deviant reconstruction. Surpassing appropriation, Turk’s canvases are pure simulation – in every aspect from their making to Turk’s artist-as-legend role play. In confronting the 20th century’s pop culture legacy, the hangover nostalgia of newness, Turk hijacks 1960s future-thrust aesthetics as a template for contemporary anxiety: his retro chic effigies are a mirror of the global, the virtual, of cannibalistic capitalism – encapsulated in the hyper-enterprise form of the knock-off.</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>Turk’s silkscreen prints – their compositions, iconic subjects, smudged newsprint style – aren’t simply lifted from Warhol, they are the product of perpetual re-enactment of modern mythology, its entropic decadence, optimism, and heroics. His self-portraits play a double/triple/multiplicity game of substitution and homogenisation, as each star’s lionised image becomes victim of economic privatisation, owned first by Hollywood’s public, then Warhol, then Turk himself. They’re a prophetic homage, delivered with punk arrogance and wit, of an exhausted golden age of originality and genius; its obsolete aura and allure, tantalising desire, vampirically distilled, compounded, and multiplied in Turk’s generative mutable hybrids.</div>

<div>&nbsp;</div>

<div>Styled on Warhol’s car crashes, Turk’s most recent Transit Disaster works exceed Warhol’s transfixing horror of banality. Substituting Warhol’s road side wrecks with the image of a torched transit van, Turk entwines ideas of social decline into Warhol’s glamorous oeuvre. In Britain, white vans are the archetypical symbol of white working class men; pictured in flames, the implication is violence or vandalism. Drawing on stereotype, the repeated image underscores both a vanishing way of life and increasingly hostile social divide, updating Warhol’s mass media format with 21st century consequences of capitalism and desensitisation.&nbsp;</div>

Me As He, Patricia Low Contemporary Solo Show (1)

Patricia Low Contemporary

Me As He Patricia Low Contemporary, Parkstrasse 3780, Gstaad, Switzerland   Private View & Artist Talk: 6pm 17th February 2011 Open:  18th February - 30th April 2011   Patricia Low Contemporary is pleased to present Me As He, a solo exhibition of Gavin Turk. In Turk’s works from his Warhol, Elvis, Gavara, and new Transit Disaster series, themes of authorship, authenticity, and celebrity are mere starting points for seduction and its deviant reconstruction.

Me As He, Patricia Low Contemporary Solo Show

Wax, Sensation in Contemporary Sculpture

Copenhagen Gallery of Contemporary Art, GL Strand

5 February - 15 May 2011

The exhibition will bring together 16 rising and acknowledged contemporary artists who within the last decades all have contributed to the strategy of the wax sculptural praxis. The participating artist are: Vanessa Beecroft, Hilary Berseth, Maurizio Cattelan, Michael Elmgreen &amp; Ingar Dragset, Robert Gober, Emil Westman Hertz, John Isaacs, Oleg Kulik, Christian Lemmerz, Kirsten Ortwed, Anne Schneider, Gavin Turk, Brigitte Waldach and Andro Wekua.

Horror, humour, fear and fascination are all reactions which the works of wax in this exhibition induce. The sculptures reflect experiments with sensing, immediacy and dialogue. In the light of this new sensory praxis, the exhibition will, in a compelling and thought-provoking way, produce new experiences of wax as a sculptural material and media for depicting the important issues of our time.

The artworks in the exhibition are grouped according to their cognitive similarities. The themes are: Performing the Iconic, On the Edge of Being, Sensation in WAX, Body Horror, and the works are created within the last couple of decades, emphasizing the last 10 years. Four artworks are created specifically for the exhibition by Christian Lemmerz, Andro Wekua and Emil Westman Hertz. The wax artworks of the exhibitions have a varying expression, from superrealism, where the sculpture has a surprisingly lifelike presence, to the abstract and minimalistic, where the focal point is the immediate expression of the artwork in relation to the senses of the spectator. Common to all the works in the exhibition is a critical reflection on the historical genres, motifs and expressions of sculptural praxis.

Featuring Gavin Turk's 'Somebody's Son' (2007)&nbsp;

Wax, Sensation in Contemporary Sculpture (1)

Wax, Sensation in Contemporary Sculpture Copenhagen Gallery of Contemporary Art, GL Strand 5 February - 15 May 2011

Wax, Sensation in Contemporary Sculpture

<div>Identity Theft Mimmoscognamiglio Arte Contemporanea, Milan 15th December 2010 - 28th February 2011</div>

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<div>A group exhibition that aims to examine some of the transformed meanings of the concepts of art and identity &nbsp;</div>

Identity Theft, Milan (1)

Identity Theft Mimmoscognamiglio Arte Contemporanea, Milan 15th December 2010 - 28th February 2011   A group exhibition that aims to examine some of the transformed meanings of the concepts of art and identity  