Super chef Mark Hix took Gavin Turk’s dietary sensibilities into account last night (21 November) to whip up a vegan feast for a friends-and-family viewing of the artist’s magnificent new solo show at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery. Chowing down on toothsome rock samphire pakoras, autumn vegetable broth and roasted penny bun mushrooms with hedgerow garlic was a clan gathering of Turk’s 90s YBA contemporaries—Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Mat Collishaw as well as Cornelia Parker, Fiona Banner and the big daddy of them all, Peter Blake. The only absence was Hirst himself who, despite owning the art and the premises, opted to remain offsite and give his artist the spotlight.
And shine Turk did, in a splendid scarlet beret which matched the rather more modest headgear of another of the evening’s illustrious attendees, the poet-novelist Ben Okri. Mr Okri currently seems to be earning a reputation as an art world scribe, writing extensive texts for both Turk’s exhibition catalogue and the book accompanying Langlands & Bell’s recent public commission for Piccadilly Circus underground station.
The Newport Street exhibition amply lives up to its title of Who What When Where How and Why (23 November-19 March 2017). Hirst’s rich collection of Turk’s works ranges from a quartet of mirrored Robert Morris cubes from the artist’s first-year show at the Royal College of Art in 1990—pre-dating the infamous heritage plaque, which is given a room of its own—to his ongoing series of rubbish-filled, Larry Bell-esque glass boxes. In-between lies a dizzying parade of multifarious Turk doppelgängers and art historical homages to the likes of Jackson Pollock, Rene Magritte, Yves Klein and Andy Warhol. The show ends with the most prescient of works: a super-sized painted bronze garbage sack which appears to be on the point of bursting its sides and spewing forth its toxic contents. Its title? American Bag (2014-16).