Details
GAVIN TURK (B. 1967)
Tip
incised with the artist's signature, title, number and date 'Gavin Turk TIP 7/8 2004' (on the underside)
painted bronze
20½ x 19¼ x 21¼in. (52 x 49 x 54cm.)
Executed in 2004, this work is number seven from an edition of eight plus two artist's proofs

Provenance
Galerie Almine Rech, Paris.
Private Collection.
Anon. sale, Phillips de Pury London, 29 June 2008, lot 287.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Exhibited
London, White Cube, The Golden Thread, 2004 (another from the edition exhibited).
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.
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Lot Essay

Created in 2004, Tip exemplifies Gavin Turk’s ongoing investigation into authenticity within the art object. Using bronze, the material of Classical Greek sculpture, Turk has cast a rubbish bin bag seemingly stuffed full of unrecyclable matter. Made to look more real than reality, Tip is a true trompe l’oeil, an artistic technique that creates the illusion of space to challenge the divide between art and life. As Turk explains, ‘I am busy making things that are obviously not what they are’ in order to question what belongs within the gallery space (G. Turk quoted in D. Leader, ‘Gavin Turk: the analyst will unmask you now’, The Guardian, November 16, 2016). Illusion lets the artist comment on production, identity and capitalist structures, and he uses waste to critique consumption patterns, believing that what one discards is as insightful as what one keeps; detritus, for Turk, is a person’s anti-portrait and another way of staging the self. Turk was part of the Young British Artists who inaugurated a new era of British art in the 1990s, and he was included in Sensation, the provocative survey exhibition of YBA art held at the Royal Academy, London.
Post Lot Text
Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot. You must pay us an extra amount equal to the resale royalty and we will pay the royalty to the appropriate authority. Please see the Conditions of Sale for further information.

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