Zwei Kerzen (Grün)

Oil on linen

Art History

Automaton

A mechanical sculpture in the form of a fortune-telling Gypsy, Rosy Lee belongs to Turk&rsquo;s investigation of mystic automatons, which all bear an uncanny likeness to himself. Along with the Joseph Conrad-esque sailor, Gentleman Jim and The Mechanical Turk - based on the automaton chess player who beat the aristocracy at games in courts across Europe (all of whom were oblivious to the real person hidden inside) during the late 18th century - the sooth-saying foreigner Rosy Lee belongs to the margins of society&ndash; the circus and the seaside amusement arcade - where she occupies a liminal space that is neither inside nor out. Cockney rhyming slang for a-cup-of-tea, Rosy Lee is also a nod to Turk&rsquo;s interest in tea and its relation to cultural trade, working class Britishness and of course the tradition of reading tea leaves. While Rosy Lee is also art rhyming slang for Rrose Selavy, the drag name of Duchamp&rsquo;s female alter ego, an allusion to art&rsquo;s ability to alter perception and its parallels with the fortune teller&rsquo;s mysterious powers to do the same. So Rosie Lee will tell the fortune of anyone who places a coin in the slot of her booth, which contains the gypsy herself, a crystal ball and a spent candle. Once the payment has been accepted, Rosy Lee will become animated and raise her head to regard the fortune seeker. Looking into the crystal ball, her eyes will glow red and her hands open. Once she has &ldquo;received&rdquo; the person&rsquo;s fortune, her head will drop - a sign her job has been done. But all is not over. A fortune card will then be delivered from the booth.

Rosy Lee

Mechanical SculptureLife Sized Automata 

Sculpture

A mechanical sculpture in the form of a fortune-telling Gypsy, Rosy Lee belongs to Turk’s investigation of mystic automatons, which all bear an uncanny likeness to himself.

The table is made of steel. The top is finished with clear original ‘Briwax’ (for lustre) and the table legs are finished with linseed oil (to protect against discolouration). Being steel, the table will be vulnerable to rust if exposed to moisture, so should be stored off the floor in a dry place. The table can be buffed to a shine without re-waxing: use separate cloths for the legs and the tabletop. The exhaust is made of blown glass. This is a more delicate material than domestic glass and should be treated with great care. The surface is very vulnerable to scratching and all abrasive contact should be avoided. When cleaning, use only water and very mild products such as vinegar, baking soda or glass cleaner suitable for lead crystal. Take care to use only cloths, which will leave no lint behind, especially when cleaning the inside. ‘Wypall’ cloths or e-cloths are very good for this purpose.When handling and moving the glass exhaust, great care should be taken to support each piece at its most vulnerable points. Each piece should be supported under the main chamber (the heaviest part) with the other parts being cradled to prevent any stress at the different junctions. Take care to keep the glass away from zips and buttons on your clothes as you are carrying. The glass exhaust and tabletop will both be marked if the two are scuffed together, so when installing the glass work on the table, lift into place rather than dragging. Wear gloves to avoid fingerprints on either surface. Because the table surface is waxed, the glass exhaust will move and spin if it is knocked. Push the two glass parts together firmly to improve the stability of the piece.For Turk the exhaust pipe represents the transport of air and is a metaphor for both breathing and exhaustion. The 'pregnant snake-like object' also holds up an anthropological mirror to societies reliance on roads and transportation and the consumption of resources at the heart of this. This work relates to his current series of bronze exhaust pipes convincingly painted to resemble rusty iron that alludes to Duchamp's readymades whilst also referring to the pipe as a symbol of more innocent times, as Bertrand Russell and his fellow intellectuals puffed their way to enlightenment and the brave new world. In this particular manifestation, the pipe is created using the exhalation or exhaustion of breath to hand blow the glass into the desired shape.'

This Is Not A Pipe

Blown glass on steel table.

Transit

Vehicles

Duchamp

Glass

The table is made of steel. The top is finished with clear original ‘Briwax’ (for lustre) and the table legs are finished with linseed oil (to protect against discolouration). Being steel, the table will be vulnerable to rust if exposed to moisture, so should be stored off the floor in a dry place. The table can be buffed to a shine without re-waxing: use separate cloths for the legs and the tabletop.

Rotor Rings

Glass and mixed media

12 rotating rings (6 front, 6 back) using the traditional Olympic colours in the style of Duchamp's Rotor Reliefs

Fate

A film of the artist as Wolfgang von Kempelen’s ‘Mechanical Turk’playing the ‘Knight's Tour’. Screened life size from the floor upwards.

In this fourteen minute film, Turk disguises himself as a life-sized 18th Century chess-playing automaton, The Mechanical Turk, whose technical wizardry was said to have outwitted even Napoleon, as this elaborate hoax toured around the most illustrious courts of Europe. The film shows Turk replaying the Knight’s Tour, a clever yet pointless circular ritual which takes the Knight across every square on the board in a mechanical mimicry of the “original” “fake”.

The Mechanical Turk

14 minute film projection, cabinet, candlestick & candle and one knight chess piece.

Chess

Identity

Masks

Self-Portrait

Faces

Film

A film of the artist as Wolfgang von Kempelen’s ‘Mechanical Turk’playing the ‘Knight's Tour’. Screened life size from the floor upwards.

Installation info: - Ensure table is resting on level surface. - Ensure control unit is plugged in to suitable power transformer. Both motors run 0-30V. - Ensure leads from both motors are inserted into control unit to ensure clockwise rotation of coin and clockwise movement of the spinning coin. - Turn switches A,B &amp; C off. - Use the small circular magnet found on top of the power unit to locate the centre of the magnetic force by releasing the magnet on top of the table on the area the coin will spin. The small circular magnet should rest in the centre. - Carefully remove the small circular magnet and replace with a 2p coin. The preferable coin is labelled. The coin will naturally sit perpendicularly to the small circular magnet at its most magnetised. - Turn two dials to left of dial D to extreme right. Turn dial D to extreme left. - Turn on switch A and switch B. Very slowly turn dial D towards line marked on unit. The coin will spin on the spot if it has been located in the centre of the magnetic force correctly. - Once the coin is spinning on the spot, turn the dials to the left of E to the extreme right, and dial E to the extreme left. Turn switch C on. Slowly turn dial E towards line marked on unit. Still spinning, the coin will move around the table. - To turn machine off, turn off switch C, the switch B, the switch A. Repeat above procedure restart machine. An eternally spinning two pence coin on a table top.

50/50

Kitchen table, coin and motor

An eternally spinning two pence coin on a table top.

Installation info: - Ensure table is resting on level surface. - Ensure control unit is plugged in to suitable power transformer. Both motors run 0-30V. - Ensure leads from both motors are inserted into control unit to ensure clockwise rotation of coin and clockwise movement of the spinning coin. - Turn switches A,B & C off. - Use the small circular magnet found on top of the power unit to locate the centre of the magnetic force by releasing the magnet on top of the table on the area the coin will spin. The small circular magnet should rest in the centre.

An eternally spinning two pence coin on a table top.

50 / 50

Table & motorised 2 pence piece

Money

Domestic

Installation info: See documents...GT Studio confirms this work requires a 13amp supply. ***DO NOT TURN OFF THE WORK MID SEQUENCE***Sensor sits 11.1 cm from the floor. Power supply and controls to the reverse.An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor.The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet. Jolly Jack tar, (union jack) colonialism. “As it hit the water the fire hissed and the sinking pipe became no more than bubbles. Jim remembered old Sampan, his teeth blackened with betel, who had given him the pipe on the other side of the globe all those years ago; how he’d predicted the fate of that infernal device, saying it would betray him and meet a watery grave. Recalling the image of Sampan only moments later himself accidentally falling off the boat brought Jim to his feet and pointing into the water, the quizzical look on his face changed, his head rolled and from the base of his stomach came a thunderous laugh.” Gavin Turk

Gentleman Jim

Life Sized Automaton

Installation info: See documents...GT Studio confirms this work requires a 13amp supply. ***DO NOT TURN OFF THE WORK MID SEQUENCE***Sensor sits 11.1 cm from the floor. Power supply and controls to the reverse.An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor.The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet. Jolly Jack tar, (union jack) colonialism. “As it hit the water the fire hissed and the sinking pipe became no more than bubbles. Jim remembered old Sampan, his teeth blackened with betel, who had given him the pipe on the other side of the globe all those years ago; how he’d predicted the fate of that infernal device, saying it would betray him and meet a watery grave. Recalling the image of Sampan only moments later himself accidentally falling off the boat brought Jim to his feet and pointing into the water, the quizzical look on his face changed, his head rolled and from the base of his stomach came a thunderous laugh.” Gavin Turk

Outsider

The Sea

Fool

Installation info: See documents... GT Studio confirms this work requires a 13amp supply.  ***DO NOT TURN OFF THE WORK MID SEQUENCE*** Sensor sits 11.1 cm from the floor.  Power supply and controls to the reverse. An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor. The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet.

An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor.

The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet. Jolly Jack tar, (union jack) colonialism.

“As it hit the water the fire hissed and the sinking pipe became no more than bubbles. Jim remembered old Sampan, his teeth blackened with betel, who had given him the pipe on the other side of the globe all those years ago; how he’d predicted the fate of that infernal device, saying it would betray him and meet a watery grave. Recalling the image of Sampan only moments later himself accidentally falling off the boat brought 
Jim to his feet and pointing into the water, the quizzical look on his face changed, his head rolled and from the base of his stomach came a thunderous laugh.” Gavin Turk

Mechanical SculptureLife Sized Automata

Appropriation

An electronic waxwork of the artist as a laughing, drunken sailor. The odd sailor is an itinerant vagrant of the high seas trapped like a butterfly in a glass case. Hollow laughter repeating in circular patterns of jerky movement. The seaside freak as free spirit forever doomed to play out the instructions of the operator like a giant puppet. Jolly Jack tar, (union jack) colonialism.

A knife slowly spinning on a yellow formica table with an electric motor. Gavin Turk in conversation with Louisa Buck, December 2006: Louisa Buck: The Negotiation of Purpose is a piece in which a knife spins round and round on a tabletop as in the game of chance. But in this case a hidden motor means that the knife keeps on turning and never stops. The implication seems to be that in this work there is no single static moment of intent or decision, the situation remains endlessly open ended. Determined purpose is cancelled out by perpetual motion: nobody is telling you what to do. Gavin Turk: The purpose is the state of negotiation, I guess. For me it was a Dada or Surrealist title for a kind of machine. A metaphor of a modernity that never quite arrived, it just became something else, it turned into what we have now. Louisa Buck: Underpinning much of modernism was the belief that truths would be arrived at and absolutes reached, whereas the present seems better expressed by this functionally dysfunctional machine that refuses a single, certain state. Or put in another way indecision is left in suspended animation. Gavin Turk: I saw this table with the knife on it as a reference to a ‘still life’ with the direction of the knife, its angle to the picture plane as its key compositional element. But at the same time because it is moving all the time. The audience gets a kind of multi perspective on the object in a cubistic way. There’s also the cliché of a revolving plinth with a sculpture on it, maybe it’s a television thing…

The Negotiation of Purpose

Kitchen table, knife and motor

A knife slowly spinning on a yellow formica table with an electric motor.Gavin Turk in conversation with Louisa Buck, December 2006: Louisa Buck: The Negotiation of Purpose is a piece in which a knife spins round and round on a tabletop as in the game of chance. But in this case a hidden motor means that the knife keeps on turning and never stops. The implication seems to be that in this work there is no single static moment of intent or decision, the situation remains endlessly open ended. Determined purpose is cancelled out by perpetual motion: nobody is telling you what to do. Gavin Turk: The purpose is the state of negotiation, I guess. For me it was a Dada or Surrealist title for a kind of machine. A metaphor of a modernity that never quite arrived, it just became something else, it turned into what we have now. Louisa Buck: Underpinning much of modernism was the belief that truths would be arrived at and absolutes reached, whereas the present seems better expressed by this functionally dysfunctional machine that refuses a single, certain state. Or put in another way indecision is left in suspended animation. Gavin Turk: I saw this table with the knife on it as a reference to a ‘still life’ with the direction of the knife, its angle to the picture plane as its key compositional element. But at the same time because it is moving all the time. The audience gets a kind of multi perspective on the object in a cubistic way. There’s also the cliché of a revolving plinth with a sculpture on it, maybe it’s a television thing…

A knife slowly spinning on a yellow formica table with an electric motor. Gavin Turk in conversation with Louisa Buck, December 2006: Louisa Buck: The Negotiation of Purpose is a piece in which a knife spins round and round on a tabletop as in the game of chance. But in this case a hidden motor means that the knife keeps on turning and never stops. The implication seems to be that in this work there is no single static moment of intent or decision, the situation remains endlessly open ended. Determined purpose is cancelled out by perpetual motion: nobody is telling you what to do.

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face, displayed in a large vitrine and heated in such a way that through a smoke-filled cabinet it could be detected by an infrared camera.

Smokey Joe

Painted bronze, smoke, infared camera, screen & vitrine

Smoke

Magritte

Pipes

A bronze figure of gnomic image taken from the Magritte painting 'le stropiat' with several pipes sticking out of his face, displayed in a large vitrine and heated in such a way that through a smoke-filled cabinet it could be detected by an infrared camera.

Old formica yellow kitchen table with empty bottle of mineral water slowly spinning operated by a motor suspended underneath table.

Kitchen Table

Table & motorised glass bottle

Old formica yellow kitchen table with empty bottle of mineral water slowly spinning operated by a motor suspended underneath table.

An old white table with a metal frame with a glass Perrier bottle spinning on its surface.

En Plein Air

studio table, glass bottle and motor

En Plein Air (1994) consists of a well-used white table with a glass Perrier bottle slowly spinning on its surface. This mechanical artwork is one of a series musing on decision-making. Air in an empty bottle, that once contained mineral water, revolving deliberately on a table – like a ouija board. But the bottle never stops spinning, or reaching its decision, caught in suspended animation.

Vessels

Chance

An old white table with a metal frame with a glass Perrier bottle spinning on its surface.