GAVIN TURK

Gavin Turk (born 1967) is a British artist and one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He often uses his own image in life-size sculptures of famous people.

Gavin Turk was born in Guildford, near London, England, and went to the Royal College of Art. However, in 1991, the tutors refused to give him the final degree because of his show, called Cave, which consisted of a whitewashed studio space, containing only a blue heritage plaque (of the kind normally found on historic buildings) commemorating his own presence as a sculptor. This bestowed some instant notoriety on Turk, whose work was collected by Charles Saatchi.

Turk pieces often involves his own image disguised as that of a more famous person. He has cast himself in a series of detailed life sized sculptures as different romantic heroes, including Sid Vicious, Jean-Paul Marat and the leftist revolutionary Che Guevara. Much as leading YBA Damien Hirst used symbolism whose semiotics imply an (involuntary) critique of the aesthetic standards (sheep) and financial propriety (sharks, being fleeced etc) of the mainstream artworld; Pop a waxwork of Turk as Sid Vicious (in white jacket and black trousers, pointing a gun - a work which toured London, Berlin and New York as part of the 1997 Sensation exhibition) appropriated the stance of Andy Warhol's painting of Elvis Presley, thereby depicting Turk himself (like Presley) as (semiotically speaking) a cowboy. In his art, Turk has also appropriated recognizable elements from Jacques Louis David, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Rene Magritte, and Jasper Johns.^[1]

Ambiguity features as much as self-obsession throughout Turk's work. What appeared to be a discarded plastic rubbish bag was in fact a bronze sculpture of one. This ambiguity is also addressed in works like Nomad (red) (2003) which looks like a sleeping bag, but is bronze, and Box (2002), which looks like cardboard but is also bronze.^[1] A large industrial skip (normally yellow, battered and covered in rust) was also painted an immaculate gloss black. Turk turned up at the private view of the Sensation exhibition at the solemn Royal Academy, London, dressed as a down-and-out. A set of what appeared to be classic posters of Che Guevara in a beret, revealed themselves on further scrutiny to be photos of Turk himself. Turk alleged that the management of London's (now defunct) Millennium Dome refused to display his Che Gavara (sic) sculpture, for fear of offending arms-manufacturing Dome sponsor BAe/Marconi (however a correspondent in Art Monthly magazine pointed out that work by the highly political left-wing cartoonist Ralph Steadman was being exhibited in the Dome at the same time).

Turk has participated in group exhibitions, including the Istanbul Biennial (1999), ‘Century City’, Tate Modern, London (2001), ‘Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop’, Tate Liverpool (2002) and ‘Coollustre’, Collection Lambert en Avignon (2003), and 'Pop Life: Art in a Material World' (2009-)^[2]. Solo exhibitions include South London Gallery (1998)^[3], Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (2000), The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2002), New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery, Salisbury (2003)^[1], Schloss Eggenberg, Graz (2006), GEM Museum of Contemporary Arts In The Hague (2007), Le Magasin, Grenoble (2007), Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2008). Turk has also been involved in "teach-in" events such as "The Che Gavara (sic) Story" (2001).^[4]

In 2007, Turk embarked on a project with his partner Deborah Curtis. The duo have been running a project based troupe of artists, The House of Fairy Tales, which was designed to further community education projects based supported by, and advocating, art. The House of Fairy Tales tour the country in a mobile gallery horse box which made its festival debut at the 2008 Crunch festival in Hay-on-Wye. In 2009, they appeared at the Glastonbury Festival.^[5]