Gavin Turk: Who What When Where How and Why

A series of artworks in a gallery space with white walls — Courtesy of Live Stock Market Ltd. & Gavin Turk, photography by Andy Keate

4 mirrored cubes sit in the centre of a room equidistant apart, on the two walls behind are two large paintings — Courtesy of Live Stock Market Ltd. & Gavin Turk, photography by Andy Keate

A compacted metal cuboid sits in the centre of a room, behind it hang three prints of a man (Gavin Turk) as Sid Vicious, adopting an iconic Elvis pose. The walls are yellow with red pattern — Courtesy of Live Stock Market Ltd. & Gavin Turk, photography by Andy Keate

A compacted metal cuboid and a small brick firepit sit in the centre of a room, on the wall are four prints of different colours showing a white van crashing — Courtesy of Live Stock Market Ltd. & Gavin Turk, photography by Andy Keate

6 sculptural figures stand in a room, 2 are in glass, 1 is reclining — Courtesy of Live Stock Market Ltd. & Gavin Turk, photography by Andy Keate

A large black skip site in the centre of a white room, around it are a few rubbish bags — Courtesy of Live Stock Market Ltd. & Gavin Turk, photography by Andy Keate

Who What When Where How and Why

23 Nov 16

Newport Street Gallery

Gavin Turk’s solo show, ‘Who What When Where How and Why’, opened on the 23rd November 2016 at RIBA Stirling's best new building of the year, Newport Street Gallery. The survey featured the iconic Cave, a commemorative blue plaque installation Turk exhibited in his 1991 Royal College of Art degree show.

A series of ‘Signature’ works, in which Turk uses his own name as a form of ready-made in order to examine ideas surrounding origin and authenticity, were also included. The signature of the artist, traditionally the valued hallmark of authority and provenance, recurred throughout ‘Who What When Where How and Why’, emerging from the canvases of Turk’s Pollock paintings; the abstract expressionist artist’s paint splatters exchanged for innumerable ‘Gavin Turk’ signatures.

Ahead of the exhibition Hirst stated, “I started collecting Gavin’s work twenty years ago. He’s an incredibly powerful artist, his work is about language and the spaces between things – about identity and being somebody and nobody, he plays with our preconceptions of what’s there and not there, of what art is and how it functions. He’s had a major impact on British art so it’s great to be able to show such an extensive collection of his work at Newport Street.”