Exhibitions2022The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain

The major exhibition, featuring some of Britain's most provocative artists, explored how ideas rooted in horror have informed the last 50 years of creative rebellion. Looking beyond horror as a genre, the show took it as a reaction and provocation to troubling times, the last five decades of British history recast in a story of cultural shapeshifting. The exhibition told a story of turbulence, unease and creative revolution that lives at the heart of the British cultural psyche in three acts – Monster, Ghost and Witch. 

Turk's contribution to the show was Ghost Pop, a life size screen-print  showing the artist as Sid Vicious in the pose of Andy Warhol's Elvis, which iconised the bequiffed star as the gunslinging cowboy, the original king of Pop. A homage to both, Turk adopts the same rebel sneer with curled upper lip, now a faded self-portrait as Sid Vicious in the pose of Elvis. The piece unsettles with its paradoxical clash of ghostly presence and absence, familiarity and otherness. 

The exhibition featured over 200 artworks and culturally significant objects, telling a story of the turbulence, unease and creative revolution at the heart of the British cultural psyche in three acts – Monster, Ghost and Witch. 

Turk's work featured alongside more than 200 artworks and culturally significant objects by artists including: A Guy Called Gerald, Barry Adamson, Hamad Butt, Adam Chodzko, Kevin Cummins, Graham Dolphin, Tim Etchells, Angus Fairhurst, Paul Finnegan, Laura Grace Ford, Ghostwatch, Lucy Gunning, Paul Heartfield, Susan Hiller, Matthew Holness & Richard Ayoade, Stewart Home, Derek Jarman, Michael Landy, Richard Littler (Scarfolk), Jeremy Millar, Haroon Mirza, Drew Mulholland, Pat Naldi & Wendy Kirkup, Cornelia Parker, Steve Pemberton, Nic Roeg, Nick Ryan, Scanner (Robin Rimbaud), Adam Scovell, Sensory Leakage, Reece Shearsmith, David Shrigley, Iain Sinclair, Kerry Stewart, Tricky, Gavin Turk, Richard Wells, Rachel Whiteread and Words & Pictures.