A group exhibition at Aurel Scheibler, Berlin that ran between 27 Nov 2015 and 20 Feb 2016.

Wintertime

A group exhibition at Aurel Scheibler, Berlin that ran between 27 Nov 2015 and 20 Feb 2016.

“We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein’s Dream was one of a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions of Turk’s works, curated by James Putnam. Turk’s installation and intervention in Freud’s former residence was an investigation of the intriguing conceptual dialogue between two enlightened Viennese thinkers of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

In the hallowed and highly charged domain of Freud’s study Turk presented [ξ, N(ξ)]’(η) (= [η, ξ, N(ξ)]) (2015), a life-size waxwork sculpture of Wittgenstein contemplating an egg. The ghost-like figure highlighting the continued tension between the theories of these two philosophical greats. Above Freud’s psychoanalytic couch was hung Parapraxis (2013), a dramatic large-scale photograph of billowing smoke in which Turk explores the human tendency to instinctively associate patterns and forms with something familiar, much in the same way as we do with dreams.

Above the fireplace in Freud’s library is a wooden framed version of Turk’s celebrated The Mechanical Turk (2006) video. This not only references Freud’s interest in the game of chess and its parallels with psychoanalysis, but also the artist’s ongoing fascination with illusionism and the issues of authorship, authenticity and identity. In the dining room Turk displayed The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (2011), a work highlighting the Narcissus myth which so inspired Freud. 
 
Turk’s three neon sculptures, Id, Ego and Super Ego (all 2015), lined the staircase, emphasising and reiterating the three theoretical constructs that comprise Freud’s structural model of the human psyche. In the Exhibition Room Turk echoed Freud’s iconic desk and chair by installing his own version, Gavin Turk’s Desk (2002-2015). As an ironic contrast to Freud’s beloved antiquities, Turk had arranged his own personal collection of intriguing, talismanic objects and keepsakes that relate to his artistic practice.

Wittgenstein’s Dream

“We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein Wittgenstein’s Dream was one of a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions of Turk’s works, curated by James Putnam. Turk’s installation and intervention in Freud’s former residence was an investigation of the intriguing conceptual dialogue between two enlightened Viennese thinkers of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

Reflections on society’s possible return to the ‘Dark Ages’ were the starting-point for the group exhibition at Aeroplastics. In collaboration with Sebastian C. Strenger (European Art Association), Jerome Jacobs explored this sombre theme through the prism of a kind of sampling from contemporary art’s recent history, as well as in works chosen by artists by way of free association.&nbsp;The exhibition proposed a step back, initiating a manner of (self)-critique.&nbsp;

The mess of economic crises was evoked by the works Europa macht Frei from&nbsp;Filip Markiewicz, the Disque d’Odin of&nbsp;Thomas Hirschorn&nbsp;and in photographic mosaics by&nbsp;Daniele Buetti. The era of capitalism versus communism resurfaced in&nbsp;Joseph Beuys’s famous Kunst=Kapital,&nbsp;Werner Büttner’s canvas and&nbsp;Sergey Maximishin’s photographs.

In an age of omnipresent media, even dreams are polluted. Acts of violence are diverse and aesthetically mined (Carlos Aires, Robert Gligorov, John Isaacs, Nadav Kander). New realities emerged in the artistic “take” of works by&nbsp;Gavin Turk, HeHe and Del Lagrace Volcano.&nbsp;Sometimes the road taken was detoured (Pierre Bismuth), sometimes sublimated (Dionisis Kavallieratos).

Dark Ages was a multifaceted exhibition that sought to show audiences that, just as Medieval times were only “dark” as seen in comparison to the idea of Renaissance “light”, the recent past is only sombre when set in dissonance by its rapport to our evermore Manichean vision of a tomorrow, at once simple and redeeming.

Reflections on society’s possible return to the ‘Dark Ages’ were the starting-point for the group exhibition at Aeroplastics. In collaboration with Sebastian C. Strenger (European Art Association), Jerome Jacobs explored this sombre theme through the prism of a kind of sampling from contemporary art’s recent history, as well as in works chosen by artists by way of free association. The exhibition proposed a step back, initiating a manner of (self)-critique. 

Dark Ages

Between 1976 and 1978, in London a New York, Punk appeared as an explosion: a few bands, converging around fanzines, fashion shops or music venues, which were showing their opposition to the conventionalism of the music industry, fashion, and the socio-political contexts by making refusal, noise, lack of responsibility and speed their leitmotiv. Punk appeared as a reaction to the crisis of the hippie dream (a mirror image of the crisis of Modernity itself); entangled in the rising of terror and terrorism as political action; in check by the economic crisis linked to the management of scarcity (of oil) which had brought along the end of the dream of progress and a generation consigned to unemployment; all of this spiced up with the return of political conservatism, signaled by the appearance of Thatcherism and Reagan. Punk manifested a furious dissatisfaction with a no-future situation, which soon caught on and expanded geographically. In Spain, it appeared soon afterwards in the burgeoning bands from the &quot;movida madrile&ntilde;a&quot; and in the more industrialized areas (mainly the Basque Country and Catalonia), amidst a generation which was already had already lost the impetus of the democratic illusion of anti-Franco struggle. But Punk is only the high point, an explosion where one can hear echoes from Dada or Situationism, of a shared feeling, a malaise, anger, dissatisfaction and a fury common throughout the whole of the 20th Century. A fury whose echo is still present today. Both Punk and its genealogy and precedents have been subject to study and analysis. In &quot;Lipstick Traces&quot;, the most significant and iconic essay on its repercussions, Greil Marcus traced, for the first time, an itinerary through the antecedents of Punk. This exhibition pretends to do the opposite: to iterate through its influence in current art, that is, to establish a genealogy up to today, or, in Greil Marcus' words, to follow its traces to the present. &ldquo;PUNK. Its Traces in Contemporary Art&quot; attempts to echo the important presence of Punk as an attitude and as a reference for many creators. So much so, that this influence might well be the only point in common between very distant artists and works; or so much so that one can trace contemporary art as a space of dissidence where to congregate a Punk attitude. Aspects such as dissatisfaction, non-conformism, loss of faith in progress, or fierce critique of the icons of the economic and social system, seem intrinsic to the practice of many artists. In the exhibition, Punk appears as an explicit reference in many artists: in the use of elements such as noise, cut-out typography, anti-design, and intentional ugliness; or by including explicit musical references to punk bands. But what is also shown is the trace of Punk as an attitude: the refusal, opposition and destruction; the do-it-yourself; the reference to fear and terror in a society which alienates individuals; that very alienation which causes states of psychosis; valuing whatever escapes the norm; nihilism; criticism of the economic system and anarchy; or the reclamation of one's own sexual freedom, of the body as a battleground. Noise, refusal, violence, destruction, alienation, anarchy, nihilism and sexuality form different subject-matter areas within the exhibition, and are accompanied by references to bands, texts, music, and some iconic works. In this manner, it reflects the multiplicity of ideas, aspects and themes that articulate the Punk attitude in contemporary art. And, inevitably, &quot;PUNK. Its Traces in Contemporary Art&quot; is an exhibition full of noise which is explicit, but is also present in the sum total of images and in contemporary art production's will to break down hierarchies, by mixing large installations, documentary traces, unique pieces, multiples, photographs, videos, painting. Finally, as proof of the antecedents and the history of Punk, the exhibition includes a diagram which shows both its origins and its traces up until the present.

Punk: Its Traces in Contemporary Art

Between 1976 and 1978, in London a New York, Punk appeared as an explosion: a few bands, converging around fanzines, fashion shops or music venues, which were showing their opposition to the conventionalism of the music industry, fashion, and the socio-political contexts by making refusal, noise, lack of responsibility and speed their leitmotiv.

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

16 years after his first show in Galerie Krinzinger, Turk returned with a contemplative exhibition responding to the Bohemian patrician creativity emanating from turn-of-the-century Vienna: the sumptuous portraits of Klimt and his protégé, the awkward permissive Schiele, the radical dissonant, anti-decadent modernity of Schoenberg and Loos and significantly the enlightened ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud.

The sculptural marionette of Ludwig Wittgenstein offering forth an egg brought a pathos to the now effete role of the contemporary western male revolutionary thinker. The once authoritative figure made impotent by the virile presence of rampant consumerist hedonism. Turk portrayed this symbol of rational thought clutching nothing but the semiotics of philosophical oxymorons, conundrums and lost enigmas.

‘A Vision’ was made with appreciation of the work and thoughts of Joseph Kosuth.

A Vision

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” Ludwig Wittgenstein 16 years after his first show in Galerie Krinzinger, Turk returned with a contemplative exhibition responding to the Bohemian patrician creativity emanating from turn-of-the-century Vienna: the sumptuous portraits of Klimt and his protégé, the awkward permissive Schiele, the radical dissonant, anti-decadent modernity of Schoenberg and Loos and significantly the enlightened ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud.

In July of 2015, Turk presented ‘Yard’, a solo exhibition of his works at The CCA Andratx in Mallorca. &nbsp;

Known for his elaborate re-enactments of art history’s legends - adopting their works’ aesthetics, creative processes and even public personas – Turk applies this artistic ‘regeneration’ to his own practice for the title piece, Yard: a short film shot in the vacant lot adjacent to Turk’s studio, one of the few industrial plots not yet re-developed in East London’s property boom. Turk positions the viewer as artist-avatar on a stealth-like and predatory mission to repurpose territory in modernism’s wasteland. As the camera surveils capitalism’s ruins, the defunct and discarded are scrutinized as cultural relics and potential creative solutions. 

Within a darkened gallery lit only by sodium street lights – suggesting both nocturnal uncertainty and museological conservation – Turk activated the notion of cultural- and self-excavation in the accompanying sculptural works. These included: a distressed version of his The Golden Thread (2004), a maze constructed from two-way mirror that exposes its own history as it returns an imperfect reflection back to the viewer; and We Are One (2014), a large-scale neon light work pronouncing the exact number of the world’s population at 18.30 January 24th 2014, the moment the piece came into being.

Transplanted to Mallorca, “Yard” was a site reconstruction – post-industrial, post-economic, post-ownership – mapping and re-mapping Turk’s history as a vacant platform for regeneration, to be occupied at will by all.

Yard

In July of 2015, Turk presented ‘Yard’, a solo exhibition of his works at The CCA Andratx in Mallorca.  

This playful exhibition included a series of works with a sense of humour. Art masquerading as everyday objects such as&nbsp;Gavin Turk’s&nbsp;A Rich Tea Biscuit,&nbsp;or a&nbsp;range of different lengths of nails, and a floor display of ascending sized Cactus, both by&nbsp;Martin Creed, challenge notions of art and value.<o:p></o:p>

Artists have been using everyday objects in their work for over 100 years, turning banal objects into works of art either in their original state or in adapted forms. This playful approach to contemporary art can also be extended to the quintessential everyday object: the human body; an object that we all own and can be used to initiate, create and facilitate creative expression. By working with everyday objects and the human body in this way, artists offer viewers accessible and identifiable ways to engage with contemporary practice.<o:p></o:p>

Via a collection of renowned visual artists including Gavin Turk, Bruce Nauman, Karina Smigla-Bobinski and Willi Dorner, the exhibition presented artworks in an engaging and imaginative way, and allowed visitors to interact and contribute to the fabric of the exhibition through selected works.<o:p></o:p>

Extraordinary: Objects & Actions in Contemporary Art

This playful exhibition included a series of works with a sense of humour. Art masquerading as everyday objects such as Gavin Turk’s A Rich Tea Biscuit, or a range of different lengths of nails, and a floor display of ascending sized Cactus, both by Martin Creed, challenge notions of art and value.

The exhibition Falling Fiction was the result of a collaboration between the Olbricht Foundation and three graduate students on the ‘Curating the Contemporary’ Master’s degree programme at London Metropolitan University. An impressive German line-up featured work by the likes of Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth and Gerhard Richter which were brought together with works by artists like Marcel Dzama, John Isaacs, and Gavin Turk under the theme of ‘Metafiction’.

The programme is run in conjunction with the Whitechapel Gallery, London, under the directorship of Nico de Oliveira. This is the fourth time that the Foundation has invited young curators to develop their own ideas and perspectives on the Olbricht Collection, and to curate a show for me Collectors Room as part of their final degree module.

Featured artists included: Doug Aitken, Joseph Beuys, KP Brehmer, Bazon Brock, Al Chang, Hansjoachim Dietrich, Marcel Dzama, Slawomir Elsner, Claire Fontaine, Imi Giese , KH Hödicke, John Isaacs, Ragnar Kjartansson, André Kertész, Imi Knoebel, Bernd Lohaus, Konrad Lueg, David Ostrowski, Blinky Palermo, Francesco Pedraglio, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Diter Roth, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Gerhard Rühm, Jean-Paul Sartre, Tomas Schmit, Gavin Turk, Wolf Vostell, Lawrence Weiner, Stefan Wewerka, Lambert Maria Wintersberger, WOLS and objects from the Wunderkammer

Falling Fictions

The exhibition Falling Fiction was the result of a collaboration between the Olbricht Foundation and three graduate students on the ‘Curating the Contemporary’ Master’s degree programme at London Metropolitan University. An impressive German line-up featured work by the likes of Joseph Beuys, Dieter Roth and Gerhard Richter which were brought together with works by artists like Marcel Dzama, John Isaacs, and Gavin Turk under the theme of ‘Metafiction’.

The Fall Of the Rebel Angels was an artist led satellite exhibition which opened concurrently with the 56th Venice Biennale of 2015. The group exhibition included work by 111 artists of different backgrounds, ages and stages of their practise. It was the only independent show that took place including new and old works.

The Fall Of The Rebel Angels did not explore, follow or define any particular topic or theme; rather, it proposed a solution for a particular time and particular place. Works of sculpture, video art, painting, print, photography and performance converged on the ground floor of the historic Venetian palazzo.

The exhibition was accompanied by a 128-page limited edition catalogue featuring some visual exclusives collated for this special occasion. This unique publication is designed, edited and produced by graphic design students at Bath Spa University in close collaboration with Rebel Angels.

Curator: Vanya Balogh

The Fall of the Rebel Angels - In association with Bath Spa University

The Fall Of the Rebel Angels was an artist led satellite exhibition which opened concurrently with the 56th Venice Biennale of 2015. The group exhibition included work by 111 artists of different backgrounds, ages and stages of their practise. It was the only independent show that took place including new and old works.

'Gav' was a site-specific&nbsp;LibraryBar presented on the occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale. Located in Calle del Forno passage, between the entrance of the Arsenale and the Via Garibaldi en route to the Giardini, Gav was a curatorial and interactive project that evolved within the lifetime of the Biennale.

In keeping with Gavin Turk’s playful references to art history and identity, Gav is also a homage to the celebrated Parisian cafés in Montparnasse where artists, including Picasso, often exchanged artworks when they were unable to settle their bills with cash.

For Gav, Turk had hung empty frames and blank canvases on the walls in a crowded salon style, providing a challenging invitation for artists to transform or replace the blank frames and canvases with their own artwork. In return artists were offered drinks and a certificate to validate the transactions over the course of the seven-month project.

The walls of the LibraryBar were slowly populated with an array of intriguing framed art works from artists of all calibers, styles, abilities and ambitions. Turk personally monitored each contribution, only accepting art works he deemed worthy of inclusion or those which rose to the spirit of the exchange. The project related to Turk’s ongoing dialogue with the meaning, value and authorship of works of art.

Gav (Library Bar)

'Gav' was a site-specific LibraryBar presented on the occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale. Located in Calle del Forno passage, between the entrance of the Arsenale and the Via Garibaldi en route to the Giardini, Gav was a curatorial and interactive project that evolved within the lifetime of the Biennale. In keeping with Gavin Turk’s playful references to art history and identity, Gav is also a homage to the celebrated Parisian cafés in Montparnasse where artists, including Picasso, often exchanged artworks when they were unable to settle their bills with cash.

Gav (Library Bar): 56th Venice Biennale

Presented by the Gervasuti Foundation in collaboration with the Hotel Metropole, The Mechanical Turk was a site-specific film installation within the context of the hotel’s Byzantine, historical and cultural references.

The film showed the artist impersonating Wolfgang von Kempelen’s famous automaton, ‘The Turk’ (1769), which was capable of playing a game of chess against a human opponent until Edgar Allen Poe exposed it as a hoax in the 1820s. Influential cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin, compared the Mechanical Turk to a particular view of history, which doesn’t see through the illusions that conceal the true mechanisms of power.

Each element in the film was deliberately chosen to echo several of the artist’s recurring motifs and themes such as Magritte’s pipe, the candle or the tombstone found in Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David (1793). Caught in the artist’s loop, the viewer witnesses the mesmerising automaton repeatedly performing the knight’s tour, a strategic move in chess that consists of moving the Knight until it has occupied every square of the chessboard only once.

Turk aptly redeploys the story of this well-known automaton as a means to question the notion of authenticity in art, the meaning of being an artist and how art is understood under the guise of celebrity and fame.

The Mechanical Turk

Presented by the Gervasuti Foundation in collaboration with the Hotel Metropole, The Mechanical Turk was a site-specific film installation within the context of the hotel’s Byzantine, historical and cultural references.

Photography Now:  An International Survey

The Wanderer’s Nightsong II was a group exhibition that explored the relationship between artists and modern forms of technological representation. The show took its&nbsp;title from Goethe’s classic eight-line&nbsp;poem scratched into the walls of a mountain lodge, the poem&nbsp;describes a&nbsp;progression from mineral through animal to human, of a natural process becoming language.

Ian Dawson questioned ideas of technical evolution and translation through his own ambiguous role as ‘curator’ role. Dawson ‘translated’ the work of each artist via 3D scanning and printing into copies of themselves, asking questions of mediation, re-mediation, authorship and originality.&nbsp;Five artists engaged in dialogue with bastard versions of themselves, to communicate across this space: Gavin Turk, Neil Gall, Kate Atkin, Cathy De Monchaux, and Chris Hawtin.

The Wanderer’s Nightsong II

The Wanderer’s Nightsong II was a group exhibition that explored the relationship between artists and modern forms of technological representation. The show took its title from Goethe’s classic eight-line poem scratched into the walls of a mountain lodge, the poem describes a progression from mineral through animal to human, of a natural process becoming language.

Watershed was an exhibition at Hall Place &amp; Gardens, Bexley, bringing together some 15 contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tania Kovats, Tatsuo Miyajima and Martin Parr who looked at water in playful, conceptual, political and meditative ways.

Through photography, sculpture, video and installations, the exhibition celebrated the precious resource of water. Gavin Turk’s Self Portrait (2012) uses the element to playfully subvert and combine traditions of self-portraiture and sculpture; the restful nature of water is captured in Korean artist Chang Kyum Kim’s meditative sculptural video projection, showing the changing seasons in a projected pond; Massimo Vitali’s monumental landscape photograph shows the pleasure of being around water in nature. In Noémie Goudal’s large scale photograph Cascade (2009), a plastic sheet replaces the pouring water; Tania Kovats’ glass and water sculpture Where Seas Meet is made with sea water from three places around the world where seas visibly meet; in David Buckland’s photographs of Ice Texts, words of warning are projected on to icebergs; Susan Derges captures the continuous movement of water by immersing photographic paper directly onto rivers or shorelines; and Martin Parr candidly documents the English at the seaside.

Watershed: Art, play and the politics of water

Watershed was an exhibition at Hall Place & Gardens, Bexley, bringing together some 15 contemporary artists including Gavin Turk, Tania Kovats, Tatsuo Miyajima and Martin Parr who looked at water in playful, conceptual, political and meditative ways.

This exhibition shone a light on the influence of the Punk movement in the world of art, establishing a genealogy and tracing it to present times. PUNK: Its Traces in Contemporary Art attempts to echo the presence of Punk as an attitude and as a reference for many creators.

In the exhibition, Punk appeared as an explicit reference for many artists: in the use of elements such as noise, cut-out typography, anti-design, and intentional ugliness; or by including explicit musical references to punk bands. Turk's&nbsp;Pop Up&nbsp;(2000) is fine example of a featured work drawing directly from the imagery of the punk movement as the artist transposes his own identity onto the iconic Prince of Punk.

Noise, refusal, violence, destruction, alienation, anarchy, nihilism and sexuality formed different subject-matter areas within the exhibition, and were accompanied by references to bands, texts, music, and some iconic works.

PUNK. Its Traces in Contemporary Art was an exhibition full of noise which was explicit, but was also present in the sum total of images and in contemporary art production's will to break down hierarchies, by mixing large installations, documentary traces, unique pieces, multiples, photographs, videos, painting.

This exhibition shone a light on the influence of the Punk movement in the world of art, establishing a genealogy and tracing it to present times. PUNK: Its Traces in Contemporary Art attempts to echo the presence of Punk as an attitude and as a reference for many creators.

For the first major rendez-vous in its tenth anniversary programme, the MAC VAL Musée d’art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne held a multi-disciplinary themed exhibition entitled Chercher le garcon.

Curator Frank Lamy brought together a hundred or so male artists who, in one way or another, challenged and destabilised established models through their work. In rejecting all manner of authoritarianism, and questioning the values traditionally associated with masculinity (effectiveness, authority, heroism, conquest, strength, etc.), the works on display offered strategies which withstand and re-define the masculine paradigm.

The exhibition offered multiple, even contradictory voices, and the displayed works were critical, distanced, analytical. The show addresses issues involving images, representations, deconstructions, plasticities and bodies.

Chercher Le Garçon

For the first major rendez-vous in its tenth anniversary programme, the MAC VAL Musée d’art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne held a multi-disciplinary themed exhibition entitled Chercher le garcon.

This exhibition at Louisa Guinness Gallery explored Turk’s long-established fascination with the ordinary. Focussing this time on nibbled Rich Tea biscuits (a plain and economic British tradition), and discarded apple cores. The show illuminates the artistic evolution of these transient objects under Turk’s scrutiny; from teatime accoutrement, to artwork.

Turk sees tea and biscuits as an essential part of the clichéd cultural history of Britain as a tea-drinking nation. For Turk, the biscuits form as much a symbolic part of the landscape as Constable, Henry Moore and William Morris. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than “Tea Biscuit” in which the biscuit is painted quite literally in tea, the medium used by the great romantic watercolourists to prime their paper before applying paint.

“Ceremonial Biscuit” is a life size solid gold cast of a Rich Tea. By capturing these humble edibles in 18k gold rather than watercolour or bronze, their symbolic importance is matched by their intrinsic value. 

The apple - or rather, its exposed core - is likewise a recurring motif in Turk’s work. Realised in 18k gold, “Ten commandments” – with its gold-set garnet apple pip - gives the apple core new life and new meaning cast in a material that echoes its symbolic importance.

Golden Delicious

This exhibition at Louisa Guinness Gallery explored Turk’s long-established fascination with the ordinary. Focussing this time on nibbled Rich Tea biscuits (a plain and economic British tradition), and discarded apple cores. The show illuminates the artistic evolution of these transient objects under Turk’s scrutiny; from teatime accoutrement, to artwork.

The exhibition marked the 10th anniversary of the Morgan Library &amp; Museum's pivotal decision to collect and exhibit modern and contemporary drawings. Long noted for its holdings of Old Master drawings, the Morgan had been able to acquire hundreds of exceptional works by some of the greatest artists of our time.

The show included more than one hundred drawings created between 1900 and 2013 by artists from Matisse, Mondrian, and Schiele to Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Twombly, and—more recently—artists such as Turk, Kippenberger and Dumas. Curated by Isabelle Dervaux, the show proposed a reflection on twentieth-century drawing, looking notably at the characteristics that define its modernity in relation to the historical tradition.

Embracing Modernism: Ten Years of Drawings Acquisitions

The exhibition marked the 10th anniversary of the Morgan Library & Museum's pivotal decision to collect and exhibit modern and contemporary drawings. Long noted for its holdings of Old Master drawings, the Morgan had been able to acquire hundreds of exceptional works by some of the greatest artists of our time.

In this extraordinary exhibition, Turner Contemporary became a frame through which self-portraiture was re-evaluated in the 21st century, sparking conversations on history, celebrity, collecting, gender, mortality and contemporary approaches. In more than 100 artist self-portraits from the 16th century to the present day, from Sir Anthony van Dyck and JMW Turner to more recent works by Louise Bourgeois and Gavin Turk, this exhibition explored the diverse ways in which artists have chosen to represent their identities.

These contemporary works look at modern-day phenomena such as social media and the digital ‘selfie’ and include Jason Evans’s new commission Sound System Self-Portrait, joining work by Louise Bourgeois; John Constable; Tracey Emin; Lucian Freud; Damien Hirst; David Hockney; Angelica Kauffmann, Sarah Lucas, JMW Turner and Gillian Wearing. The works in&nbsp;Self&nbsp;remind us that the self-portrait has remained a potent form of expression for artists since Van Dyck first painted his likeness in a mirror.

Self: Image and Identity: Self-Portraiture from Van Dyck to Louise Bourgeois 

In this extraordinary exhibition, Turner Contemporary became a frame through which self-portraiture was re-evaluated in the 21st century, sparking conversations on history, celebrity, collecting, gender, mortality and contemporary approaches. In more than 100 artist self-portraits from the 16th century to the present day, from Sir Anthony van Dyck and JMW Turner to more recent works by Louise Bourgeois and Gavin Turk, this exhibition explored the diverse ways in which artists have chosen to represent their identities.