Artworks2008Waiting for Gavo Puppets

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. 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.