Just Stop Soup

Oil and acrylic on canvas

Art History

Food

Warhol

Revolution

Cans

Painting

Transit Disaster Red on Yellow

Silkscreen ink on Heritage paper

Transit

Silkscreen

Untitled Fright Wig Piss Painting

Silkscreen ink and metallic paint on canvas

Icons

Piss

Waste

Masks

Self-Portrait

Faces

GT Hens Eggs

On the occasion of  the 55th Venice Biennale Turk created a site specific project for the Gervasuti Foundation.   The installation comprised of a work based on the artist’s ongoing Transit Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and ‘vernacular‘, a metaphor implying the social connotations that the iconic white Ford van of the ‘90s represents in British society and a paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context, a city without roads.  Vanacular reconfigures a language of identity between that which is considered an accident of fate and that which is invested with intent, both in art and in life.Turk often recycles famous art historical imagery in order to make contemporary societal correlations. Vanacular revives the classic pop-art technique of silk-screen-on-canvas while referencing the works of its most celebrated exponents Andy Warhol and Robert Raushenberg with his 18 metre long Currents (1970). Inspired by Warhol’s famous Death And Disaster series (1962-3), which were derived from photographs of fatal car accidents taken from newspapers, Turk’s Vanacular comprises of a 27 metre long canvas with a selection of sourced images of crashed and/or burnt-out Ford Transit vans.  The expressive shapes of the distorted metal, every scratch as if charged with meaning, also allude to the underlying social tensions that led to the 2011 London riots which some of these images come from.  The repeated still images silk-screened in a ‘Warhol style’ range of colour combinations produce an animated effect as if to suggest a disaster movie. The orchestration of colours enhances this sense of motion which in turn effects a transformation or change from the stasis of the crashed vans into a new energy or lifeforce. The Transit Disaster series is not merely a pastiche of Warhol’s famous car crash paintings since Turk replaces the American car with an image of a white transit van, a symbol of a disappearing era of working class Britain. Vanacular also relates, albeit indirectly, to the term ‘Fordism’, the notion of a modern economic and social system based on an assembly line of mass production for a mass market. Turk’s Vanacular represents a visual manifestation of urban unrest, which through continuous clashes and disasters is heading towards a materialistic mutation.

Vanacular

Silikscreen on canvas

On the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale Turk created a site specific project for the Gervasuti Foundation. The installation comprised of a work based on the artist’s ongoing Transit Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and ‘vernacular‘, a metaphor implying the social connotations that the iconic white Ford van of the ‘90s represents in British society and a paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context, a city without roads. Vanacular reconfigures a language of identity between that which is considered an accident of fate and that which is invested with intent, both in art and in life.Turk often recycles famous art historical imagery in order to make contemporary societal correlations. Vanacular revives the classic pop-art technique of silk-screen-on-canvas while referencing the works of its most celebrated exponents Andy Warhol and Robert Raushenberg with his 18 metre long Currents (1970). Inspired by Warhol’s famous Death And Disaster series (1962-3), which were derived from photographs of fatal car accidents taken from newspapers, Turk’s Vanacular comprises of a 27 metre long canvas with a selection of sourced images of crashed and/or burnt-out Ford Transit vans. The expressive shapes of the distorted metal, every scratch as if charged with meaning, also allude to the underlying social tensions that led to the 2011 London riots which some of these images come from. The repeated still images silk-screened in a ‘Warhol style’ range of colour combinations produce an animated effect as if to suggest a disaster movie. The orchestration of colours enhances this sense of motion which in turn effects a transformation or change from the stasis of the crashed vans into a new energy or lifeforce. The Transit Disaster series is not merely a pastiche of Warhol’s famous car crash paintings since Turk replaces the American car with an image of a white transit van, a symbol of a disappearing era of working class Britain. Vanacular also relates, albeit indirectly, to the term ‘Fordism’, the notion of a modern economic and social system based on an assembly line of mass production for a mass market. Turk’s Vanacular represents a visual manifestation of urban unrest, which through continuous clashes and disasters is heading towards a materialistic mutation.

Vehicles

On the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale Turk created a site specific project for the Gervasuti Foundation. The installation comprised of a work based on the artist’s ongoing Transit Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and ‘vernacular‘, a metaphor implying the social connotations that the iconic white Ford van of the ‘90s represents in British society and a paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context, a city without roads.

Banana

Yellow neon

Sculpture

Ghost Pop

Sid Vicious

Outsider

Punk Gunslinger Blue and Green

Diamond dust and acrylic paint on canvas

Acrylic paint and diamond dust on canvas

Celebrity

Punk Gunslinger Yellow and Orange

Rock Gunslinger Pink and Red

Elvis

Rock Gunslinger Yellow and Green

Double Blue Elvis

The artist as Elvis in blue and black on silver

Electric Elvis

Disaster series painting featuring a Transit Van in black on beige in multiple printAppropriations of appropriations, Turk&rsquo;s Transit Disaster series re-cycles Warhol&rsquo;s car crash paintings from the Pop Artist&rsquo;s Death And Disaster series, which in turn were re-cycled from photographs of fatal accidents taken from newspapers. Except, rather than an American car, the vehicle in question in Turk&rsquo;s work is the iconic white van, symbol of a certain white working class Britishness, now dying its own kind of slow death, as the UK moves into a post-industrial, multi-cultural era, where demand for them is beginning to diminish. Where Warhol&rsquo;s &ldquo;originals&rdquo;, anesthetized violence through multiple reproductions in bright, saturated colours, so the Transit Disaster paintings become abstractions of abstractions, transforming horror into beauty and death into something striking and sexy as the deformed metal of the crashes become textures, patterns and shapes, with the notion of Britishness becoming the ultimate casualty.

Transit Disaster Beige

Disaster series painting featuring a Transit Van in black on beige in multiple print

Double Pop

Identity

Punk

Installation info: Hang on wall avoiding direct sunlight, heat and moisture

Double Red Pop Gun

Installation info: Hang on wall avoiding direct sunlight, heat and moisture

Appropriations of appropriations, Turk’s Transit Disaster series re-cycles Warhol’s car crash paintings from the Pop Artist’s Death And Disaster series, which in turn were re-cycled from photographs of fatal accidents taken from newspapers. Except, rather than an American car, the vehicle in question in Turk’s work is the iconic white van, symbol of a certain white working class Britishness, now dying its own kind of slow death, as the UK moves into a post-industrial, multi-cultural era, where demand for them is beginning to diminish. Where Warhol’s “originals”, anesthetized violence through multiple reproductions in bright, saturated colours, so the Transit Disaster paintings become abstractions of abstractions, transforming horror into beauty and death into something striking and sexy as the deformed metal of the crashes become textures, patterns and shapes, with the notion of Britishness becoming the ultimate casualty.

Transit vs Cobra Disaster Red

Appropriations of appropriations, Turk’s Transit Disaster series re-cycles Warhol’s car crash paintings from the Pop Artist’s Death And Disaster series, which in turn were re-cycled from photographs of fatal accidents taken from newspapers. Except, rather than an American car, the vehicle in question in Turk’s work is the iconic white van, symbol of a certain white working class Britishness, now dying its own kind of slow death, as the UK moves into a post-industrial, multi-cultural era, where demand for them is beginning to diminish.

Fright Wig Black on White

The artist as Elvis in black diamond dust on red ground

Black Diamond Elvis

Large Red Fright Wig

Silkscreen ink and diamond dust on paper

Hand gun section taken from Pop image of the artis as Sid Vicious in the pose of Andy Warhol's Elvis Presley

Blue Pop Gun

Installation info: Hang directly on wall, butted together with no gap between.  Avoid direct sunlight, heat or moisture.

Pop Diptych

Installation info: Hang directly on wall, butted together with no gap between. Avoid direct sunlight, heat or moisture.

Hand gun section taken from Pop image in black on gold

Pop Gun Gold

Artist

Fright Wig Pink and Black on Yellow

Purple Fright Wig

A print of the artist as Elvis in black on mirror with chemical dissolve effect

Dorian Grey

Silkscreen and mirrored ink on glass

Mirrors

Flaneur

Ghost Fright Wig

Faded screen ink, silkscreen & aluminium

A used yellow screen printing screen with a washed out black image of the Artist as Andy Warhol.

Fright Screen

Appropriation

A used yellow screen printing screen with a washed out black image of the Artist as Andy Warhol.

A line drawing in the style of Warhol made from a photograph of Warhol attending an opening at the ICA.

I.C.Andy

Coloured pencil on paperPrint of font

Dandy

Work on paper

A line drawing in the style of Warhol made from a photograph of Warhol attending an opening at the ICA.

A used white screen printing screen with a washed out black image of the Artist as Andy Warhol over a washed out black image of the Artist as Che Guevara.

Fright Che

A used white screen printing screen with a washed out black image of the Artist as Andy Warhol over a washed out black image of the Artist as Che Guevara.