Gervasuti Foundation
GAVIN TURK
VANACULAR
A project for the 55th Venice Biennale
Opening 28 May 2013, 6:00pm
Exhibition runs from 29 May to 24 November 2013
Curated by James Putnam and Fiona Biggiero
Ass. Curator Vassiliki Tzanakou
On the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale, the Gervasuti Foundation
is proud to present Vanacular, a sitespecific project by British artist Gavin Turk.
This installation is comprised of a selection
of works based on the artist’s ongoing Transit
Disaster series. The title is a pun on ‘van’ and
‘vernacular’, a metaphor implying the social
connotations that the iconic white Ford van
of the ‘90s represents in British society and a
paradoxical play on the Venetian urban context,
a city without roads. Vanacular reconfigures
a language of identity between that which is
considered an accident of fate and that which is
invested with intent, both in art and in life.
Turk often recycles famous art historical
imagery in order to make contemporary
societal correlations. Vanacular revives the
classic pop-art technique of silk-screen-oncanvas while referencing the works of its most
celebrated exponents Andy Warhol and Robert
Raushenberg with his 18 metre long Currents
(1970). Inspired by Warhol’s famous Death And
Disaster series (1962-3), which were derived
from photographs of fatal car accidents taken
from newspapers, Turk’s Vanacular comprises
a site-specific 27 metre long canvas with a
selection of sourced images of crashed and/or
burnt-out Ford Transit vans. The expressive
shapes of the distorted metal, every scratch
as if charged with meaning, also allude to the
underlying social tensions that led to the 2011
London riots which some of these images come
from. The repeated still images silk-screened
in a ‘Warhol style’ range of colour combinations
produce an animated effect as if to suggest a
disaster movie. The orchestration of colours
enhances this sense of motion which in turn
effects a transformation or change from the
stasis of the crashed vans into a new energy or
lifeforce.
Transit Disaster series is not merely a pastiche
of Warhol’s famous car crash paintings since
Turk replaces the American car with an
image of a white transit van, a symbol of a
disappearing era of working class Britain.
Vanacular also relates, albeit indirectly, to the
term ‘Fordism’, the notion of a modern economic
and social system based on an assembly
line system of mass production for a mass
market. Turk’s Vanacular represents a visual
manifestation of urban unrest, which through
continuous clashes and disasters is heading
towards a materialistic mutation.
Gavin Turk is a London based artist whose
work deals with issues of identity and
authenticity as well as avant-garde theories
around the myth of the artist and authorship
of art. He has exhibited internationally at
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany;
49th Venice Biennale, GEM Museum for
Contemporary Art, Hague; Tate Modern and
Whitechapel Gallery, London. He was awarded
the Jack Goldhill Sculpture Prize by the Royal
Academy, London. (2000). Turk returns to
the Gervasuti Foundation where in 2009 his
En Face project was included in Distortion,
a Collateral exhibition of the 53rd Venice
Biennale.
courtesy of Ella, Aedan & Darya collection
& Aeroplastics, Brussels.
Gervasuti Foundation
Fondamenta S. Ana
(Via Garibaldi)
Castello 994, 30122 Venezia
nearest vaporetto stop:
press@gervasutifoundation.org
gervasutifoundation.org
