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Gavin Turk - Ben Brown Fine Arts

31 January 2012

Gavin Turk
Day & Night, 2012
Embroidery on cloth
13.5 x 13.5 cm; (5 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.)

The next scheduled exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts is a solo collection by John Jones Artist Surfaces client Gavin Turk. In this collection, the artist pays homage to Alighiero Boetti, an Italian conceptual artist who is the subject of a Tate Modern retrospective running between late February and May 2012. Boetti was intrigued by symbols, and worked with a team of craftswomen in Afghanistan to create embroideries of the world map where each country was made of its own flag. Like Boetti, Turk is collaborating with a production team to create a series of embroideries. This team is from Fine Cell Work, a charity that teaches needlework to prison inmates as part of the rehabilitation process. This labour intensive production method reflects the artist’s love of hand-made objects, which, along with authorship and identity, has been a key theme throughout Turk’s work over the past 25 years. Using a collection of squashed rubbish including crisp packets, drinks cans and cigarette packets, Turk has created a squashed collage of a world map. Here, Turk transforms machine products into something hand-made, discarded items into a luxury art object. The exhibition will also feature a series of ‘grazzi’, small embroidered variations on ‘GAVIN TURK’, alongside various other hommages to Boetti. British Artist Gavin Turk is a valued Artist Surfaces client who regularly purchases our bespoke artwork stretcher bars. These stretchers are produced using the finest quality kiln-dried tulip wood, a low emission hard wood which helps to prevent against long-term warping or distortion.

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