Lot 287: Tip n°2, 2004

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Description: Tip n°2, 2004
Painted bronze. 52 x 45 x 45 cm. (20 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 17 3/4 in).  This work is unique.

Notes: "Concerned with the ‘myth' of the artist and the ‘authorship' of a work, Turk's engagement with this modernist, avant-garde debate stretches back to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp. In the early 1990s, Turk made a number of works based on his own signature that comment on the value that the artist's name can confer onto a work... More recently, Turk has taken inspiration from the street, making sculptures of ordinary, everyday objects such as bin bags, sleeping bags or polystyrene coffee cups in bronze that is then painted to appear hyper-real. The works are wry and ironic, again underlining the way that an artist can transform an object's value, and confer a canonical status to something that is literally ‘rubbish' and usually overlooked." (Taken from http://www.whitecube.com) Appearing to be nothing more than a bin bag, the present lot surprisingly is a bronze sculpture. It paradoxically plays with how a regular domestic item can become a piece of art while reflecting the idea that "many people say contemporary art is a load of rubbish. Gavin makes work that looks like it and uses humour to turn the whole argument on its head." (Tim Marlow taken from Evening Standard interview)

Provenance:  Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

Artist or Maker: GAVIN TURK