Exhibitions2014Liqueur D'Expédition

Liqueur D’Expedition, which opened at Christian Larsen, was Gavin Turk’s first solo exhibition in Sweden. The phrase refers to a small amount of sweet and alcoholic liquid added to a champagne bottle after the “lees”, or sediment, has been disgorged.

There is no definitive English translation, but a direct reading would make "a sweet tincture from an exploration". The amount of sugar in liquer d’expedition determines the degree of sweetness in the champagne and gives the drink its final character. In this sense, liquer d’expedition could be understood as a metaphor for Turk’s oeuvre: a decades long comment on the role of art, a sweet additive that tops up the cultural bottle and gives the period its own distinct flavour.

The exhibition included a combination of sculpture, photography and paintings, highlighting the diversity of Turk’s artistic expression. Nothing is more revealing of a time and a place than its cultural icons and its rubbish. Turk recycles it all, from art history and pop culture to plain rubbish such as old tyres and plastic garbage bags. He re-interprets Warhol by inserting himself into his iconic images, while at the same time elevating an apple core to the sublime status of a precious art object in a masterly executed bronze sculpture.