8 November - 8 February 2015
Gallery: New Art Centre Sculpture Park & Gallery Roche Court

Turk's latest exhibition brings together many of his neon works, the signature pieces he made between 1995 and 2013 and which show the evolution of his practice, quite literally, in lights; their glow, suitably enough for Turk, has the aura of consumer fetish, celebrity and glamour. Turk often co-opts and transforms original meaning and many of his neon works turn everyday objects into luminous symbols. Hence a banana and a lobster channel the spirit of Warhol and Duchamp, in order to create Turk's own-brand logos. Visually reduced to minimal typographies, other works offer signs of communication in its simplest form: a seeing eye, a flickering flame, primordial hieroglyphs, with their ancient mysteries and secrets, evolved to modern day usage. A red Maltese cross alludes to Yves Klein's interest in the Order of St John. Turk wore the Maltese cross when he married recently, in a ceremony that was a partial re-enactment of Klein's own wedding. Moreover each point of the Maltese cross represents the eight lands of origin, the origin of languages, and the values of truth, sincerity and faith.

The exhibition has been selected from Seven Billion Two Hundred and One Million Nine Hundred and Sixty-Four Thousand and Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight, first shown at The Bowes Museum, County Durham earlier this year and which was curated by Greville Worthington. At the New Art Centre the neon works shown in the gallery are joined by additional sculptures shown outside in the park at Roche Court.

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