A poster of Elvis Presley with a check background painted in by the Artist.

The Pebble (Chequered Background)

Acrylic on poster

Elvis

Icons

Identity

Artist

Collages

Work on paper

A poster of Elvis Presley with bum style newspaper shoes painted over his feet by the Artist.

DIY Shoes (Elvis in Newspaper Shoes) (2)

Acrylic ink on printed paper

A poster of Elvis Presley with bum style newspaper shoes painted over his feet by the Artist.

Homeless

Self-Portrait

DIY Shoes (Elvis in Newspaper Shoes)

A life size waxwork of the Artist as a tramp.

Another Bum

Waxwork & concrete

Outsider

Fool

Masks

Faces

Sculpture

A life size waxwork of Che Guevara in the pose of Warhol’s Elvis and dressed in army fatigues and a beret pointing a revolver.

Waxwork in brass, wood and glass vitrine

A life size waxwork of Che Guevara in the pose of Warhol’s Elvis and dressed in army fatigues and a beret pointing a revolver.

Warhol

Revolution

Alchemy

The Artists proof from the making of the photographic artwork

Godot

painted over with oil to give the figure a check jacket, bowler hat and several smoking pipes. In

Godot,

The Artist "re-cycles" a Magritte self-portrait which features an apple - symbol of secret knowledge from the Garden of Eden - instead of a human head. In Turk's interpretation, instead of an apple, on The Artist's neck sits a chicken's egg. A recurring theme in Turk's work, eggs are symbols of new life and new ideas. What ideas even now are hatching in The Artist's mind? What new life/meaning has Turk given to the original Magritte painting? Meanwhile, the title of the piece refers to Samuel Beckett's famous absurdist play,

Waiting For Godot.

Is Godot, the possibly redemptive, possibly fictitious mystery character for whom The Artist also is waiting. (For what? To give him The Answer? Inspiration? A hotline to The Truth?). Or is The Artist, as the title more directly suggests, the nebulous Godot himself? Acquiring even more layers of meaning,

Godot's Day Off

goes further. Here, the egg head is both surreally - and indeed apparently serenely - smoking multiple pipes in a homage not only to Magritte but also Duchamp, both of whom were famous pipe smokers but also Magritte's famous surrealist joke,

Ce N'Est Pas Une Pipe

(This Is Not A Pipe) - a drawing of a pipe which questions the notion of representation. Meanwhile, pipe-smoking itself stands for intellectual contemplation and pausing to think. Gentlemen - especially old fashioned ones - tend to smoke pipes. They also tend to wear the traditional English bowler hat. This bowler hat hints at not only the English intellectual but the English establishment - to which the artist may or may not belong - and also to the English stiff upper lip. The Third Eye in the centre of the bowler hat, meanwhile, subverts this institutionalisation of intellectual ideas with its proposition not only of a psychic window onto the soul but also onto the mystery and the enigma of The Truth.

Godot&rsquo;s Day Off

Oil on C-type print

Eggs

Pipes

Magritte

Godot

Photographic Work

The Artists proof from the making of the photographic artwork Godot painted over with oil to give the figure a check jacket, bowler hat and several smoking pipes. In Godot,

Godot's Day Off

A poster of Elvis Presley with a Che Guevara style hat painted on by the Artist.

Hasta La Victoria Siempre (Elvis on summer holiday with Che Beret)

A poster of Elvis Presley with a Che Guevara style hat painted on by the Artist.

A poster of Elvis Presley with his head painted over by the Artist to look like an egg. Following in the footsteps of Dali, Magritte and Manzoni, eggs recurs again and again in Gavin&rsquo;s work as sculptural metaphors for the surreal philosophical puzzle; which came first, the chicken or egg? Symbols of life, of creation, of originality, fragility and mortality Turk&rsquo;s eggs appear as surreal faces, as giant duck eggs, as broken shells depicting his signature and in liquid form as mayonnaise and egg tempura, while his &ldquo;hare&rdquo; eggs create mythical new hybrids altogether. Transforming eggs from the sacred to the profane, the pure to the parasitical, a symbol of creation to something created, Turk journeys from eggs to eggs cups to egg-cup shaped fonts as he explores the delicate relationship between life and death, art and artist.

Odo (Egg head Elvis)

A poster of Elvis Presley with his head painted over by the Artist to look like an egg.

A painted bronze bust of the artist with a shotgun nose inspired by Magritte&rsquo;s Oscar.This rather curious looking character with bulging eggs for eyes and a shotgun nose is taken from a Magritte painting &lsquo;L&rsquo;ellipse&rsquo;. He has become a self portrait turned 2D to 3D and cast in bronze and then painted with all the lurid and clashing colours of the original. Magritte is one of the most striking and consistent of the so-called surrealists and his imagery permeated the Artist&rsquo;s work His child-like painting syle produces image after image of the familiar meeting the unfamiliar. Like dreams that take the realities of the day and collage them into impossible yet highly plausible scenarios, Magritte expresses his subconscious on canvas. Oscar is a character from a period of his life called by critics his &lsquo;Vache&rsquo; or &lsquo;Renoir&rsquo; period, when he appeared to be reacting against the controlled, meticulous and tranquil clocks and pipes and moustaches: the signifiers of ordered civilized European society. Suddenly he got expressive and violent &ndash; but with humour. The violent imagery of the shotgun impotently and Pinnochio-like in place of a nose (sneezing out the bullets), juxtaposed with the spooky eye peering from the bowler hat &ndash; symbol of power and professionalism and of course the grown-up gentleman&rsquo;s ill fitting check suit. This contrasts with the fay positioning of the back to front hands offering up &ndash; or is it pleading in supplication?

Oscar

Painted bronze

A painted bronze bust of the artist with a shotgun nose inspired by Magritte’s Oscar.

A life size waxwork of the artist as a tramp.

In 1997, London’s Royal Academy of Arts hosted ‘Sensation’, an exhibition of work by young British artists from the collection of Charles Saatchi. This highly publicised exhibition opened with a celebrity filled party and Turk, who was exhibiting, arrived dressed as a homeless person wearing ‘worn-in’ clothes and a pair of specially fabricated ‘shoes’. Turk said ‘I thought everyone else would be dressed up and I didn’t have any party clothes, so I ended up making some’. This outfit became a part of the sculpture ‘Bum’ – a kind of degenerate version of ‘Pop’. Turk later made two similar waxworks, ‘Another Bum’ and ‘The Last Bum’.

&nbsp;

The Last Bum

Waxwork in vitrine

Shoes

A life size waxwork of the artist as a tramp.

A poster of Elvis painted over by the Artist to resemble Sid Vicious.

Viva La Rock (Sid Elvis)

Sid Vicious

Dandy

A poster of Elvis painted over by the Artist to resemble Sid Vicious.

A poster of the Artist as Che Guevara, repeated four times in they style of an Andy Warhol screenprint. Originally made as an advertising poster.The inspiration behind Turk&rsquo;s Che Gavara art works is the Alberta Korda photograph of the infamous Argentinean freedom fighter whose wild hair and beard, guerrilla beret and long distance stare came to personify the ultimate symbol of rebellion. Interested in the role of the outsider but also, how images and symbols are reduced to clich&eacute; through reproduction and repetition, Turk&rsquo;s Guevara is transformed into a Warholian screen print, where the formerly rebellious is re-appropriated as clich&eacute;. But this Che is also given the &ldquo;Gav&rdquo; treatment, with Turk&rsquo;s face replacing that of the Marxist hero as he continues his exploration of the uneasy relationship between artist/outsider and the market, advertising, celebrity and branding.

Che Gavara

Acrylic silkscreen on paper

Appropriation

Silkscreen

A poster of the Artist as Che Guevara, repeated four times in they style of an Andy Warhol screenprint. Originally made as an advertising poster.

A poster of Elvis Presley painted over by the Artist so his eyes appear to be shut.

Elvis Eyes Shut (portrait that Elvis will never really see)

Eyes

A poster of Elvis Presley painted over by the Artist so his eyes appear to be shut.

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face.

Cripple

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat'  with several pipes sticking out of his face.

Painted Bronze