Gavin Turk’s art questions what it means to make art and what it means to be an artist practising today. The art is reflexive and philosophical whilst the playful use of references, materials and imagery charms the audience into joining his academic reverie. The humble object (often not quite what it seems) transformed into a key prop from a bigger stage. Nomad—depicting a tragic figure encased in a sleeping bag hidden from the world—is given a noble title. Immortalised in bronze, far from being a figure of pity, it recalls ancient ancestors or soothsayers. Bronze apple cores given names such as The Mirror Stage bring symbolism into tiny discarded amulets. The myth of Ariadne explored in works such as The Golden Thread—a modernist maze made of vitrine-like cells where the audience becomes lost in the art—becomes the art. His interest in this archetype, this passive female recipient of art histories male gaze is more a metaphor for cultural out-of-focusness and abandonment. His hand carving of a spade Desert Island Scenario reflects on life without culture should we become isolated on the Defoe island.For the Portfolio Gavin Turk has taken this idea further with the idle musings of a shipwrecked artist carving cultural fairy tale iconography pirate-style into a whale bone. A scrimshaw rendering of Moby Dick meets Theseus and de Chirico.

Melancholia

Etching on 300 gsm somerset velvet

Alchemy

Work on paper

Gavin Turk’s art questions what it means to make art and what it means to be an artist practising today. The art is reflexive and philosophical whilst the playful use of references, materials and imagery charms the audience into joining his academic reverie. The humble object (often not quite what it seems) transformed into a key prop from a bigger stage. Nomad—depicting a tragic figure encased in a sleeping bag hidden from the world—is given a noble title. Immortalised in bronze, far from being a figure of pity, it recalls ancient ancestors or soothsayers.

Installation info: - Ensure table is resting on level surface. - Ensure control unit is plugged in to suitable power transformer. Both motors run 0-30V. - Ensure leads from both motors are inserted into control unit to ensure clockwise rotation of coin and clockwise movement of the spinning coin. - Turn switches A,B &amp; C off. - Use the small circular magnet found on top of the power unit to locate the centre of the magnetic force by releasing the magnet on top of the table on the area the coin will spin. The small circular magnet should rest in the centre. - Carefully remove the small circular magnet and replace with a 2p coin. The preferable coin is labelled. The coin will naturally sit perpendicularly to the small circular magnet at its most magnetised. - Turn two dials to left of dial D to extreme right. Turn dial D to extreme left. - Turn on switch A and switch B. Very slowly turn dial D towards line marked on unit. The coin will spin on the spot if it has been located in the centre of the magnetic force correctly. - Once the coin is spinning on the spot, turn the dials to the left of E to the extreme right, and dial E to the extreme left. Turn switch C on. Slowly turn dial E towards line marked on unit. Still spinning, the coin will move around the table. - To turn machine off, turn off switch C, the switch B, the switch A. Repeat above procedure restart machine. An eternally spinning two pence coin on a table top.

50/50

Kitchen table, coin and motor

An eternally spinning two pence coin on a table top.

Automaton

Fate

Sculpture

Installation info: - Ensure table is resting on level surface. - Ensure control unit is plugged in to suitable power transformer. Both motors run 0-30V. - Ensure leads from both motors are inserted into control unit to ensure clockwise rotation of coin and clockwise movement of the spinning coin. - Turn switches A,B & C off. - Use the small circular magnet found on top of the power unit to locate the centre of the magnetic force by releasing the magnet on top of the table on the area the coin will spin. The small circular magnet should rest in the centre.

Tyre prints on a pair of white Vans slip on shoes,signed and dated by the Artist.

A Van’s Tyre Print

Screen printing ink on shoe

Shoes

Ready Made

Installation info: Place directly in the centre of a plinth or shelf A glass jar of air from 1968.

The Air of Change

Glass jar, lid and air from 1968

Installation info: Place directly in the centre of a plinth or shelfA glass jar of air from 1968.

Found Object

Installation info: Place directly in the centre of a plinth or shelf A glass jar of air from 1968.

A film of the artist as Wolfgang von Kempelen’s ‘Mechanical Turk’playing the ‘Knight's Tour’. Screened life size from the floor upwards.

In this fourteen minute film, Turk disguises himself as a life-sized 18th Century chess-playing automaton, The Mechanical Turk, whose technical wizardry was said to have outwitted even Napoleon, as this elaborate hoax toured around the most illustrious courts of Europe. The film shows Turk replaying the Knight’s Tour, a clever yet pointless circular ritual which takes the Knight across every square on the board in a mechanical mimicry of the “original” “fake”.

The Mechanical Turk

14 minute film projection, cabinet, candlestick & candle and one knight chess piece.

Chess

Identity

Masks

Self-Portrait

Faces

Film

A film of the artist as Wolfgang von Kempelen’s ‘Mechanical Turk’playing the ‘Knight's Tour’. Screened life size from the floor upwards.

A watercolour of a cardboard box with an open lid.

Golden Section

Fourteen framed watercolours on paper

A watercolour of a cardboard box with an open lid.

An early 1900&rsquo;s style shop sign reading Gavin TurkEngland as a nation of shopkeepers is a notion attributed to economist Adam Smith and then later to Napoleon who was scathing in his attitude to Britain as a worthy opponent. The artist spent his formative years under the political regime of Margaret Thatcher, herself a daughter of a grocery shop owner, she took on the task of radicalizing the free market and embracing capitalism. The nostalgia generated by Relations and the other works in the shop sign series reflects a cultural shift from small family run business to global brands more allied to America than to Europe. England is no longer a nation of shopkeepers but factory fodder for corporate consumerism. The irony of an individualist free-thinking artist being part of a family business is bound up in this paradoxical image. The artist could not have been running the business that the sign implies, his grandparents could perhaps: but then again. They would have sold up long ago. This work suggests that the sign has been found like several other works in the exhibition. A prop from a film found in a junk shop, an accidental readymade, a piece of ephemera rather than the meticulously crafter artifact that it actually is.

Shop Sign

Gold leaf, black gloss paint & glass on wood

Signs

An early 1900’s style shop sign reading Gavin TurkEngland as a nation of shopkeepers is a notion attributed to economist Adam Smith and then later to Napoleon who was scathing in his attitude to Britain as a worthy opponent. The artist spent his formative years under the political regime of Margaret Thatcher, herself a daughter of a grocery shop owner, she took on the task of radicalizing the free market and embracing capitalism.

A ten panel print of the artist as Andy Warhol in black each on a different coloured background.

Fright Wig X

Silkscreen ink and metallic paint on canvas

Warhol

Appropriation

Icons

Silkscreen

A ten panel print of the artist as Andy Warhol in black each on a different coloured background.

GB car sticker replaced with the artists initials.

GT Car Sticker

Printed cut-out sticker

Vehicles

GB car sticker replaced with the artists initials.

A blue-green circular splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Oxidiation Paintings. These elegiac works steal much from previous paintings by Otto Muhl, Hermann Nietsche and other 70&rsquo;s actionists, as well as the great recycler and thief of imagery Warhol, who in the early 1980&rsquo;s made a series of oxidization works created by his assistant&rsquo;s urination. The copper ground and cobalt fractals of these works brings echoes of Klimt and the decorative precursors of the actionists, but this is simultaneously counteracted by the transgressive process of their production: bodily waste, the ultimate form of disposable human rubbish used to make marks on canvas. This series of works first came out of a performance at Riflemaker gallery in London during the exhibition &lsquo;Me as Him&rsquo; 1997 where camouflage fright wig screenprints of the artists as Warhol were on display. During the evening visitors were invited to urinate on a collection of pre-prepared canvases in an extrovertly collaborative exercise. The signature of mark making, in random spurts, rushes and pools, makes a corrosive recycling of ideas.

Piece of Piss

Oxidised urine on copper-prepared canvas

Piss

Painting

A blue-green circular splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol’s Oxidiation Paintings.

A pink and green outline of &lsquo;Font&rsquo;, slightly offset to create a 3D effect.

3D Font

Acrylic silkscreen on paper

Font

Illusion

A pink and green outline of ‘Font’, slightly offset to create a 3D effect.

A newspaper collage of the artists Font sculpture.

Metro Font

Newsprint on paper

A newspaper collage of the artists Font sculpture.

Twelve panels hung together, each with a blue-green splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Oxidiation Paintings. These elegiac works steal much from previous paintings by Otto Muhl, Hermann Nietsche and other 70&rsquo;s actionists, as well as the great recycler and thief of imagery Warhol, who in the early 1980&rsquo;s made a series of oxidization works created by his assistant&rsquo;s urination. The copper ground and cobalt fractals of these works brings echoes of Klimt and the decorative precursors of the actionists, but this is simultaneously counteracted by the transgressive process of their production: bodily waste, the ultimate form of disposable human rubbish used to make marks on canvas. This series of works first came out of a performance at Riflemaker gallery in London during the exhibition &lsquo;Me as Him&rsquo; 1997 where camouflage fright wig screenprints of the artists as Warhol were on display. During the evening visitors were invited to urinate on a collection of pre-prepared canvases in an extrovertly collaborative exercise. The signature of mark making, in random spurts, rushes and pools, makes a corrosive recycling of ideas.

Untitled Piss Painting x 12

Twelve panels hung together, each with a blue-green splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol’s Oxidiation Paintings.

A bronze cast of a crushed polystyrene chip tray, painted to look real.

Finding beauty in the trashy and ugly, Turk gives the polystyrene used chip tray – alongside with its cousin the burger tray – a grandiose makeover, transforming rubbish into art in the form of a painted bronze sculpture. The remains of a traditional English dish and cheap street food for the masses, Turk’s chip trays become elegiac and nostalgic relics not just of a hearty meal but a set of cultural values which appear to be rapidly vanishing.

Cod and Chips to Take Away

Painted bronze

Packaging

Food

Polystyrene

A bronze cast of a crushed polystyrene chip tray, painted to look real. Finding beauty in the trashy and ugly, Turk gives the polystyrene used chip tray – alongside with its cousin the burger tray – a grandiose makeover, transforming rubbish into art in the form of a painted bronze sculpture. The remains of a traditional English dish and cheap street food for the masses, Turk’s chip trays become elegiac and nostalgic relics not just of a hearty meal but a set of cultural values which appear to be rapidly vanishing.

A painting based on Magrittes

Ceci ne’st pas une pipe.

Ceci n&rsquo;est pas un l

Diamond dust and acrylic paint on canvas

Acrylic paint and diamond dust on canvas

Magritte

Forgery

A painting based on Magrittes Ceci ne’st pas une pipe.

Ceci n'est pas un l

A lose adaptation of the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting For Godot, Waiting For Gavo is a slapstick take on the uneasy, often absurd but ultimately co-dependent relationship between artists and the art market in the form of a surreal puppet show of Turk's own invention. Here the mysterious Godot is replaced by the equally elusive Gavo, while Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky become hand made puppet caricatures of Duchamp, Beuys, Charles Saatchi as &quot;Scratchy&quot; and Andy (Warhol), respectively - each with a face bearing an uncanny similarity to Turk. Following in the foot steps of multi-layered Turk works such as Pop and the Death of Marat, where Turk role plays famous characters from art history, Waiting For Gavo finds Turk in the role of both puppet and puppet master. Using the blunt instrument of caricature to open up the complex philosophical and political questions about art, identity, value and meaning, Waiting For Gavo playfully explores the paradox of the artist's power to control his own fate on the one hand and his powerlessness in the face of it, on the other.

Waiting for Gavo Puppets

Acrylic paint, fibreglass, clothing, hair & steel rods

Fool

A lose adaptation of the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting For Godot, Waiting For Gavo is a slapstick take on the uneasy, often absurd but ultimately co-dependent relationship between artists and the art market in the form of a surreal puppet show of Turk's own invention. Here the mysterious Godot is replaced by the equally elusive Gavo, while Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky become hand made puppet caricatures of Duchamp, Beuys, Charles Saatchi as "Scratchy" and Andy (Warhol), respectively - each with a face bearing an uncanny similarity to Turk.

A dancing diagram, in the style of Andy Warhol, painted onto a surfboard commissioned by SAS (Surfers Against Sewage) for a charity event.

Shamone Board

Painted surfboard

A dancing diagram, in the style of Andy Warhol, painted onto a surfboard commissioned by SAS (Surfers Against Sewage) for a charity event.

A large charity box, originally of a Panda sitting on a rock, altered by the Artist leaving just the rock. Created in aid of the World Wildlife Foundation exhibition and auction &lsquo;Pandamonium&rsquo;.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Painted resin

Readymade

Animalia

A large charity box, originally of a Panda sitting on a rock, altered by the Artist leaving just the rock. Created in aid of the World Wildlife Foundation exhibition and auction ‘Pandamonium’.

A car tyre print on paper, as sold at the Art Car Boot Fair 2008.

Tyre print

Silkscreen ink and diamond dust on paper

A car tyre print on paper, as sold at the Art Car Boot Fair 2008.

A blue-green splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Oxidiation Paintings. These elegiac works steal much from previous paintings by Otto Muhl, Hermann Nietsche and other 70&rsquo;s actionists, as well as the great recycler and thief of imagery Warhol, who in the early 1980&rsquo;s made a series of oxidization works created by his assistant&rsquo;s urination. The copper ground and cobalt fractals of these works brings echoes of Klimt and the decorative precursors of the actionists, but this is simultaneously counteracted by the transgressive process of their production: bodily waste, the ultimate form of disposable human rubbish used to make marks on canvas. This series of works first came out of a performance at Riflemaker gallery in London during the exhibition &lsquo;Me as Him&rsquo; 1997 where camouflage fright wig screenprints of the artists as Warhol were on display. During the evening visitors were invited to urinate on a collection of pre-prepared canvases in an extrovertly collaborative exercise. The signature of mark making, in random spurts, rushes and pools, makes a corrosive recycling of ideas.

Piss painting (oval) title TBC

A blue-green splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol’s Oxidiation Paintings.

A bronze cast of an apple core with red skin and fatter in the middle than the ends, painted to look real.Eaten and then thrown away, Turk takes the discarded, shrivelled and dead and gives it new life in the form of miniature painted bronze sculptures. Heavy with the symbolism of an English Eden, these once ripe fruits, alongside their associations with knowledge and temptation, Adam&rsquo;s apple and of course, Eve, have been discarded and tossed away. Now &ldquo;rotten to the core&rdquo;, the fruits of the utopian English garden have become a poisonous symbol of man&rsquo;s fall. Or perhaps they are nothing more ominous than evidence of a healthy diet in which their daily consumption contains the promise to keep the doctor away.

ERGO SUM

Apples

A bronze cast of an apple core with red skin and fatter in the middle than the ends, painted to look real.

A long blue-green splash resembling a cloud on two bronze coloured landscape panels, caused by oxidised urine on a copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Oxidiation Paintings. These elegiac works steal much from previous paintings by Otto Muhl, Hermann Nietsche and other 70&rsquo;s actionists, as well as the great recycler and thief of imagery Warhol, who in the early 1980&rsquo;s made a series of oxidization works created by his assistant&rsquo;s urination. The copper ground and cobalt fractals of these works brings echoes of Klimt and the decorative precursors of the actionists, but this is simultaneously counteracted by the transgressive process of their production: bodily waste, the ultimate form of disposable human rubbish used to make marks on canvas. This series of works first came out of a performance at Riflemaker gallery in London during the exhibition &lsquo;Me as Him&rsquo; 1997 where camouflage fright wig screenprints of the artists as Warhol were on display. During the evening visitors were invited to urinate on a collection of pre-prepared canvases in an extrovertly collaborative exercise. The signature of mark making, in random spurts, rushes and pools, makes a corrosive recycling of ideas.

Untitled Cloud Piss Diptych

Clouds

A long blue-green splash resembling a cloud on two bronze coloured landscape panels, caused by oxidised urine on a copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol’s Oxidiation Paintings.

A bronze cast of an apple core with red skin and pips showing, painted to look real.Eaten and then thrown away, Turk takes the discarded, shrivelled and dead and gives it new life in the form of miniature painted bronze sculptures. Heavy with the symbolism of an English Eden, these once ripe fruits, alongside their associations with knowledge and temptation, Adam&rsquo;s apple and of course, Eve, have been discarded and tossed away. Now &ldquo;rotten to the core&rdquo;, the fruits of the utopian English garden have become a poisonous symbol of man&rsquo;s fall. Or perhaps they are nothing more ominous than evidence of a healthy diet in which their daily consumption contains the promise to keep the doctor away.

Seeded

A bronze cast of an apple core with red skin and pips showing, painted to look real.

A blue-green splash on a bronze coloured background, caused by oxidised urine on copper prepared canvas. Based on Andy Warhol&rsquo;s Oxidiation Paintings. These elegiac works steal much from previous paintings by Otto Muhl, Hermann Nietsche and other 70&rsquo;s actionists, as well as the great recycler and thief of imagery Warhol, who in the early 1980&rsquo;s made a series of oxidization works created by his assistant&rsquo;s urination. The copper ground and cobalt fractals of these works brings echoes of Klimt and the decorative precursors of the actionists, but this is simultaneously counteracted by the transgressive process of their production: bodily waste, the ultimate form of disposable human rubbish used to make marks on canvas. This series of works first came out of a performance at Riflemaker gallery in London during the exhibition &lsquo;Me as Him&rsquo; 1997 where camouflage fright wig screenprints of the artists as Warhol were on display. During the evening visitors were invited to urinate on a collection of pre-prepared canvases in an extrovertly collaborative exercise. The signature of mark making, in random spurts, rushes and pools, makes a corrosive recycling of ideas.

Soft Cosmic Piss Painting

A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a quail egg.Eggs recurs again and again in Turk's work. Symbols of life, of creation, of originality, they appear as surreal faces, giant duck eggs, broken shells and in liquid form as mayonnaise and egg tempura. Transforming eggs from the sacred to the profane, the pure to the parasitical, a symbol of creation to something created.

Oeuvre (Common Quail)

Painted fibreglass

Eggs

A giant fibreglass egg painted to look like a quail egg.Eggs recurs again and again in Turk's work. Symbols of life, of creation, of originality, they appear as surreal faces, giant duck eggs, broken shells and in liquid form as mayonnaise and egg tempura. Transforming eggs from the sacred to the profane, the pure to the parasitical, a symbol of creation to something created.

Untitled Astrological Piss Painting

A bronze cast of the middle of a toilet roll painted to look real.Turk&rsquo;s trompe l&rsquo;oeil sculptures of toilet rolls mischievously imply a symbiotic association between art and shit. Indeed, works such as In Memory of Piero Manzoni see Turk make a playful reference to Manzoni&rsquo;s Merda D&rsquo;Artista in which he presented cans of shit as art. Concerned with challenging meaning through re-cycling, re-appropriation and re-contextualisation, Turk&rsquo;s bog rolls might also be seen to taken on a new life as a child&rsquo;s telescope &ndash; itself an object used to change the viewer&rsquo;s perspective. They also bear an uncanny similarity to rollers used by painters and decorators to apply paint and wallpaper, transforming the artist into a humble tradesman in the process. Or perhaps not, since these bog rolls are made not from cardboard but bronze, elevating the status of the banal to something far more grand.

Piero Roll

A bronze cast of the middle of a toilet roll painted to look real.

A perspex chair with an egg shape cut out of the seat and a bucket placed underneathand the back signed and dated by the artist. Created in aid of the Charity chair auction &lsquo;Take your seats&rsquo;.

Egg Seat

Plastic chair & bucket

A perspex chair with an egg shape cut out of the seat and a bucket placed underneathand the back signed and dated by the artist. Created in aid of the Charity chair auction ‘Take your seats’.

A watercolour of a cardboard box with an open lid.

Open Box

A piece of paper with a circular red wine stain encased in a bottle shaped frame.

Red Wine Stain

Red wine, wood, glass & paper

Stain

Bottles

A piece of paper with a circular red wine stain encased in a bottle shaped frame.