Gavin Turk: ‘My art is always other people's art’It’s been 25 years since ‘Sensation’, the 1997 landmark Royal Academy show in London that rattled the very fabric of art as we knew it. Everything was controversial, everything stirred the senses, and nothing, in British art at least, has been the same since.&nbsp;One artist in the nucleus of this melting pot was Gavin Turk, a key protagonist of the YBAs (Young British Artists). Turk’s subversive visual identity has long been defined by ‘quoting’ ingredients from other artists or sources and fusing them with his own. The resulting recipe is a provocative blend that questions core notions of authorship and value. ‘My art is always other people's art,’ he says. ‘But I'd also say that the inevitability of contemporary art is that it's always a self-portrait as well.’Among his most recognisable hits are Pop (1993), a waxwork figure of Turk as Sid Vicious posing as Andy Warhol's Elvis Presley, which appeared as one of the headline works in ‘Sensation’; Pile (2004), a hyperreal ensemble of bronze-cast bin bags; and more recently, a curious homage to Piero Manzoni in Artist’s Piss (2021), a series of aluminium cans filled with, well, the title covers that.&nbsp;On the face of it, ‘Kerze’, at London’s Ben Brown Fine Arts, seems devoid of the electric-shock factor for which Turk is known. ‘Normally my works are humorous’, he says, walking me around the exhibition in November. ‘I had an idea that there might be some humour in the unexpectedness of this as a show by me. It makes you laugh because it's a bit off-key.’ In that sense, it is very Turk indeed; but we must look harder, and deeper. He is, after all, an artist for which we’re conditioned to expect the unexpected.&nbsp;Turk has transformed the gallery into something akin to a chapel. Eleven canvases of meticulously painted candles (some solitary, some paired or in threes) are set against eerie, hazily-lit modernist backgrounds. Focus on one painting, and another in your peripheral vision appears to billow in the gallery’s slow wind.The <a href="https://www.wallpaper.com/art/london-art-exhibitions-post-lockdown">London art exhibition</a> is something of a quote within a quote. Turk first came across Kerze (Candle), a 1983 painting by Gerhard Richter, on the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1988 album, Daydream Nation. And it’s been lodged in his subconscious ever since. ‘I think I was a bit of a daydreamer, and that's probably why I ended up being an artist,’ Turk reflects. ‘At the time, there was still energy between the image and the music. It was still significant to be able to have the music and a picture to look at.’‘I conceived of them quite conceptually, like a sculpture,' he says ‘It’s about paring it down and really going for the minimal thing and just seeing how that feels or how it works.’There is one obvious distinction between the two artists’ take on ‘Kerze’: Richter’s candle is lit, Turk’s are extinguished. While Turk describes Richter’s work as having ‘the energy of now’, his own paintings suggest the immediate aftermath of human presence, as the candle breathing the death rattle of its combustion.A candle, in the 21st century, is a relatively superfluous addition to daily life, symbolising occasion, sacredness, mourning and celebration. Turk’s paintings seem to dwell on the afterthought, each with a lingering question mark. &nbsp;Turk has often mined from the toolbox of Surrealism, his work featuring eggs, pipes, doors, windows, candles, and smoke. ‘I keep talking about [the candles] as metaphysical symbols. ‘They appear and reappear in Surrealism. They're almost like a clock, then they disappear into the air like a ghost,’ he says. Surrealism yes, but also antiquity; the extinguished candle, after all, is a well-oiled memento mori.&nbsp;Gavin Turk’s ‘Kerze’ is a show of many sensations. There’s a lure of familiarity, dashed by a simple yet fundamental intervention; melancholy and nostalgia for moments just passed; a daydream floats above a hyperreality, and a puff of subtle, but characteristically subversive humour.Gavin Turk, ‘Kerze’, until 14 January 2023, Ben Brown FIne Arts, London.Full piece can be read <a href="https://www.wallpaper.com/art/gavin-turk-interview-kerze-london">here</a>.&nbsp;

Gavin Turk 

We interview British artist Gavin Turk, whose show ‘Kerze’ at Ben Brown Fine Arts is an ode to Gerhard Richter, with an uncanny twist

Kerze

Gavin Turk: ‘My art is always other people's art’It’s been 25 years since ‘Sensation’, the 1997 landmark Royal Academy show in London that rattled the very fabric of art as we knew it. Everything was controversial, everything stirred the senses, and nothing, in British art at least, has been the same since. 

Interview - Wallpaper* by Harriet Lloyd-Smith

A new three-part documentary series explores the explosion of art, music and culture in the 80s that changed the landscape of modern Britain forever.

Known as the Young British Artists, these bad girls and boys of British art, along with DJs, writers and musicians, share their memories of student life and warehouse parties, of art that shocked and the mayhem that followed.

Ripping up the rule book of what art could be, they pushed the boundaries, resulting in a creative explosion that put Britain’s art and culture at the centre of the global stage.

The series coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art.

[Watch <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cbst/episodes/guide">Here</a>]

Art History

A new three-part documentary series explores the explosion of art, music and culture in the 80s that changed the landscape of modern Britain forever. Known as the Young British Artists, these bad girls and boys of British art, along with DJs, writers and musicians, share their memories of student life and warehouse parties, of art that shocked and the mayhem that followed. Ripping up the rule book of what art could be, they pushed the boundaries, resulting in a creative explosion that put Britain’s art and culture at the centre of the global stage.

BBC Documentary - Sensationalists: The Bad Girls and Boys of British Art 

Gavin Turks unveils a brand new public sculpture ‘<a href="https://gtfront.platform-3.co.uk/artworks/2022/ariadne-wrapped">Ariadne Wrapped</a>’ on 17th June 2022, in front of Cambridge Station. This sculpture in the Station Square set against the colonnade of Cambridge Station generates echoes of a Giorgio de Chirico painting, playing with the Italian artist’s metaphysical, surreal cityscapes.

This sculpture in the square appears at first glance to be an object covered in a dust sheet and bound with rope, on further inspection it becomes apparent that this sculpture is a trompe l’oeil and the coy cloth covering is forever fixed, the temporary surface permanent.

The shape of the covered object suggests a reclining figure, in an archetypal prone pose, the mythical Ariadne saviour of Theseus now abandoned on the island of Naxos, from this classical story of forces beyond humanity. Now presented as a packaged shape forever in transportation, informed by the sound of the train the parcel lies in limbo. The criss-cross of ropes and string act like compositional or navigation lines, pointers to new perspectives.

Art historically the wrapped work reminds the viewer of other artworks namely by Christo and Jean-Claude, Man Ray and even Henry Moore.

In 2011 Gavin Turk installed Nail, a 12-metre bronze sculpture of a giant rusty nail protruding from the pavement, in front of St Pauls Cathedral, and in 2016 the Artist installed L’Âge d’Or a ‘larger than life’ painted bronze door in Queen Elizabeth Park. These works including the newly placed ‘Ariadne Wrapped’ are surreal symbols, that invite the audience inside a larger metaphysical maze.

[Watch video&nbsp;<a href="https://gtfront.platform-3.co.uk/videos/gavin-turk-ariadne-wrapped">Here</a>]&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Ariadne

Gavin Turks unveils a brand new public sculpture ‘Ariadne Wrapped’ on 17th June 2022, in front of Cambridge Station. This sculpture in the Station Square set against the colonnade of Cambridge Station generates echoes of a Giorgio de Chirico painting, playing with the Italian artist’s metaphysical, surreal cityscapes.

Interview - Wallpaper* by Harriet Lloyd-Smith

BBC Documentary - Sensationalists: The Bad Girls and Boys of British Art

Ariadne Wrapped 2022