A circle must begin somewhere. As the creative ribbon unwinds, it sets off a sequence of events involving artist, patron, viewer, recorder and installer. Thoughout this unravelling, perceived meaning and quality, the way in which a work is viewed and valued, will change. The influence of those who come into contact with it and the effect they have on the work will determine how it appears, how we react to it and, eventually, what it actually is.
Through the interception of the creative mind – the upsetter – at any point within this chain, assumptions about the role of originator and receiver may also alter, or reverse. Any of these creative role-players may swap positions. Their actions may be transformed into subject-matter itself. The Mona Lisa is beyond qualitative assessment. It is ‘great’ because generations have found it so. The portrait’s setting, the rope around it, the bullet-proof glass, the crowds outside and the promise of the painting’s reality before our very eyes, make us want to experience it. We understand that the Mona Lisa is indeed both sitter and Artist, subject and object, A and B, but we don’t really care, as long as what we’re looking at is the real thing – as long as it’s ‘authentic’, ‘mythical’ and most importantly, priceless.
Authorship and signature is all. The back of the painting as valuable, as viable, as the front; obverse and reverse, in the language of coinage. Who did it. Did what exactly ? Created the work… or the myth ? What you see is what you get at entry point, but it may not be what you get after time. People don’t fire ‘blanks’ anymore. Everyone, not just the Artist, wants to have an effect, invent/re-invent, promote, distort, sabotage. Thus, time’s ribbon will change both the perception and result of the fireball in the event chain – and it will change us.
Gavin Turk is the Upsetter. In Me as Him, he is maker, master, subject, sitter, giver, receiver and observer. Present at all points in the circle, affecting all parts of the process. A process during which the use and placement of that which is created, the willing objet d’art, may in fact end up being the Art, just as much as the real art itself – a layering known as installation, interior design or architecture.
But the Artist is not the only one who receives ‘the spark’. The Receiver may yet steal the badge Artist, for it is he who notices and understands, makes fire, acts upon that flicker of intent; that gold thread which needs reception, perception and enhancement to make it live – to make it ‘really real’, or in Turk’s case, really and truly artificial. The Receiver gets an idea noticed. He brings it to life so that other creators and noticers may act upon and benefit from it. In this life, this day and age, in and out of context, in this ‘mash’; perception, placement and enhancement really are everything.
Gavin Turk’s visual remixes fall neatly into a creative circle, or ‘circuit’, within his own work and the rewind and fast forward of his particular reel. In Me as Him, Turk (b.1967 Guildford) turns his gaze toward the most celebrated and celebrity-obsessed figure in contemporary art. A figure whose aims and methods we know – or think we know. The final self-portraits of Andy Warhol – artist, celebrity, svengali, master-Upsetter – exhibited in London in 1986, provide the visual template for Turk to appropriate in a new suite of screenprinted canvases. The subject is originality, authorship and the marketable identity of the Artist – the Artist in question being both Warhol and Turk himself.
Gavin Turk’s rough mix of arrogance and self-effacement has been at the heart of his work since the beginning. In his RCA degree show the artist unveiled a completely empty studio except for a ceramic blue-plaque affixed to the wall, announcing the fact that ‘Gavin Turk worked here 1989-91’. Turk was denied his degree. The Artist ignited his best, most personal spark. Hardly anyone noticed.
From this untimely, early demise, Turk has fashioned for himself a career on the subject of fame, the myth of authorship and what it is to be an Artist. Like a sophisticated ‘tribute’ band, he has replayed Art’s Greatest Hits in homage to the ‘creative personality’ where invention, endlessly refashioned and imitated, becomes cliché. Those who have played host to ‘Gav’ along the way include Sid Vicious (inhabiting Warhol’s Elvis pose), Ché Guevara and David’s Marat. His remix partners have been De Chirico, Klein, Manzoni and Duchamp in a series of works covering virtually every medium.
In the present work, Turk portrays the over-celebrated superstar as Warhol did, with affection and wonder, and, like Warhol, he is only interested in ‘household names’. As society becomes infatuated with the idea of fame for fame’s sake, it is especially timely that Turk should now take on ‘Andy’, staring out of the master’s final likeness, the camouflage-patterned ‘fright-wig’ paintings premiered at Anthony d’Offay’s gallery in London 1986, just months before the artist’s death.
The above-mentioned are all egoistic, rebellious, quasi-revolutionary figures, both revered and notorious. The work of these artists exists partly to cause a sensational response. In the case of Warhol, the self-portraits replay elements the artist had ‘copyrighted’ before; a personal way of doing things that has since become cliché in the hands of those paying tribute to the Factory style. The grey-green wash underneath stars and stripes red and blue. The fascination with camouflage, an illusion and rendering developed for the purpose of distortion and loss of identity, rather than the vagaries of fashion and ‘being noticed’ – the way in which the pattern is used today. Lastly, the subject’s fixated stare and the tight, no-frills composition. The very idea of self-portaiture suggests a ‘stamper’ approach; passport fotos, postage-stamps, mugshots and banknotes. ID itself is literally a ‘pose’, the creation of a personal uniqueness nowadays jargonised as ‘branding’. Just as Warhol utlised his hooped Picasso shirt, his shades, his wig, his ever present camera to make a instant easy-to-use cartoon out of his own complex reality.
As Turk takes up residence within the Master’s image, the result is a deluxe re-making and re-layering which reverses the intended purpose by refashioning the cliché into something genuinely ‘artificial’ and therefore, at the other end of the circle, daringly ‘original’.
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