Gav is a pen drawing of punk-style collage newsprint spelling ‘GAV’. Signed by the artist twice, once as a punk and once as an Artist, this double-signature alludes to his dual personality. Which - if either - of these signatures is authentic, the true Gavin Turk? Or perhaps they are both authentic, each in their own way?
Essays
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Punk - Jon Savage
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Punk - Jon Savage
In Gavin Turk’s “Pop”, the artist is cast as Sid Vicious via Warhol’s “Elvis”. While Warhol sourced a still from the 1960 film “Flaming Star” for his silk-screened multiples, Turk reproduces Sid’s most iconic moment: the filmed performance of “My Way”, where the junk-sodden singer in a destroyed white dinner jacket shoots the audience in a climactic spasm of disgust.
Both sources are high Pop. Warhol’s images in their various forms: doubled, tripled, colour, black and white are prime exam-ples of Pop Art, while Sid Vicious’ punk de/construction of the narcissistic night-club standard was a Top Ten hit for the Sex Pistols in summer 1978. But they uncover a level of violence and hostility in pop culture that only the bravest seek to explore.
Before the style went national, London Punk was a British version of Andy Warhol’s high Sixties Factory. Many of the musicians and fans were Velvet Underground obsessives who had followed Lou Reed through 1970’s hits like “Walk On The Wild Side” into his later, more self-destructive “Rock’n Roll Animal” incarnation: pure punk with his plastic clothes, dark shades, and A-head jaw-line.
There was the same self-reinvention into cartoon pseudonyms Siouxsie Sue, Soo Catwoman,