Gavin Turk

Gavin Turk (born 1967, Guildford) is a British artist associated with the Young British Artists generation of the late 1980s and 1990s. His practice centres on questions of authorship, identity, authenticity, and the construction of the artist as cultural persona. Working across sculpture, painting, printmaking, and installation, Turk consistently interrogates the mechanisms by which artistic value, celebrity, and institutional legitimacy are produced and sustained.

His best-known work, Pop (1993), presents a wax self-portrait modelled simultaneously on Sid Vicious, museum display culture, and counterfeit identity — encased in a vitrine and holding a gun toward the viewer. The work was acquired by the Saatchi Collection and became one of the defining sculptural images of the early YBA period. Turk’s practice also includes Cave (1991), a blue heritage plaque installed in his Royal College of Art studio declaring his own presence, which was rejected as his degree show and became a foundational gesture in his ongoing examination of institutional authority.

This collection brings together exhibition ephemera and printed matter connected to Turk’s practice and institutional presentations.

  • Saatchi Collection postcard reproducing Gavin Turk Pop (1993). Colour photograph of wax self-portrait figure encased in brass-framed glass vitrine: figure in white blazer, dark trousers and boots, wild dark hair, holding a gun toward the viewer in a wide stance; gallery floor and white wall visible behind; photograph by Hugo Glendinning. Reverse of Gavin Turk Pop 1993 Saatchi Collection postcard. Cream stock with standard postcard dividing line; caption at lower left: 'Gavin Turk / 'Pop', 1993 / glass, brass, MDF, fibre glass, wax, clothing & gun / Saatchi Collection, London / Photograph: Hugo Glendinning.

    Gavin Turk — Pop, 1993 — Saatchi Collection Postcard

    Gavin Turk — Pop, 1993 — Saatchi Collection Postcard