Gavin Turk’s work also addresses the status of the art object, its almost religious veneration, and the heroic status of the artist. Through his use of the accepted codes of his discipline, signature and attribution, he questions the notions of authorship and authenticity. Controversy surrounded his degree show at the Royal College of Art, which consisted of an exhibiting space devoid of objects aside from a blue commemorative wall plaque which read: Borough of Kensington, GAVIN TURK, Sculptor, worked here 1989-1991. This was in the established manner of English Heritage signs on buildings around London marking the former homes of truly famous personages. Turk had not only impudently anticipated celebrity, but had replaced the artworks which might have won him fame with one of the mechanisms for its posthumous recognition. In the image in this selection, we are invited to examine the artist's seemingly pickled right hand and forearm, perhaps in the hope of analysing the nature of the genius which resides within. It looks like dead meat, but closer examination reveals that the artist is still attached and very much alive, in the business of perpetuating the legend of his talents.

This work comes from the Londonportfolio, one of the most significant British print publications of the 1990s. .

Further reading:
Contemporary British Arts in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and The Paragon Press, 1995 (texts by Jeremy Lewison, Patrick Elliott and Duncan Macmillan)