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To coincide with the Edinburgh International Festival 2004, Edinburgh Printmakers is delighted to host an exhibition of the portfolio Faces, seven new screenprints by Gavin Turk. Like Marilyn Monroe herself, Warhol was famous for the ambiguity of his statements. Were these naive utterances innocent or did they contain some deep truth? He once said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” As he cultivated such a transparent persona, he became an object of intense speculation. In many cases, Warhol became more famous than the celebrities he depicted yet everyone he touched became bathed in a shining glow of glamour. In his “Faces” portfolio, Gavin Turk cleverly plays with Warhol’s legacy. In 1980, for example, Warhol produced prints based on his own photograph of Joseph Beuys, then the only living artist to match his celebrity status. By turning Beuys into a diamond dusted “Warhol”, the canny American triumphed over his German rival, undermining the seriousness of Beuys’s political commitment by presenting him merely as the latest celebrity image. Here Warhol suggests that the artist’s publicity image is more important than his work. Turk has escalated this process, trumping both Warhol and Beuys along the way. In “Red Beuys” and “In Memory of Silver Beuys” he not only unashamedly mimics Warhol’s image, technique, materials and colours, he also substitutes his own face for that of Beuys. If Beuys was originally turned into a “Warhol”, now Warhol and Beuys have been turned into a “Turk”. Unlike other political figures such as Mao, Che Guevara never featured in Warhol’s work, yet in Turk’s hands his iconic image is both Warholised and Turkified. Although this image has the generic look of a Warhol, the face of Guevara is actually Turk’s (slyly hinted at in the title “Gavara Reversed”). This becomes even more intriguing when we note that Che already occupies a place in Turk’s own oeuvre. In 2000, he displayed a waxwork of himself as the revolutionary, exhibited a billboard poster based on the same famous image and in a 2001 performance, adopted the role of Che for a period of days. Is this simply as an elaborate art world in-joke? Almost certainly not. Much of Turk’s work concerns itself with questions of identity and empathy. Not only has he entered into the image-space of Che, but in “Pop” (1993) he also presented a waxwork figure of himself as Sid Vicious as Elvis Presley. He also repeated this exercise in “Another Bum” of 1999. Turk is not alone in exploring this kind of role-playing. Douglas Gordon does likewise in his 1996 photograph of himself in a blonde wig entitled “Self Portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe”. Austrian artist Irene Andessner’s takes this even further when she “becomes” Marlene Dietrich for a few months in 2001 and marries a Mr. Dietrich to officially change her surname! It is also significant that Turk has titled this current series of prints “Faces”, rather than “Portraits”. A portrait tells us about the individuality, personality, status or psychological state of the subject. A face, on the other hand, is more akin to a mask, something that can conceal as much as it might reveal (untrustworthy individuals are “two-faced”). In today’s world our identities are statistics and scientifically verifiable data: passport, credit card and National Insurance numbers, finger prints, DNA and signatures. Where are “we” in all of this? Where is the “real” Gavin Turk? Where can we find the signs of “true” identity? Extract from an essay by John Calcutt, 2004 Diamond
Dust Volume One To coincide with the Edinburgh International Festival 2004, Edinburgh Printmakers is delighted to host an exhibition of the portfolio Diamond Dust Volume One.
Peter Blake
To a meteorologist it would mean crystals of ice. To industrial cleaners, it would suggest a highly abrasive scouring agent. In the art world it would almost certainly be associated with the work of Andy Warhol. In 1979 Warhol began encrusting silkscreen prints with this gritty, glittering, coloured material, producing his famous “Diamond Dust Shoes” in 1980. Many critics interpreted these glitzy and scintillating effects as a commentary upon the superficiality of modern life, its obsession with glamour, illusion and showy extravagance. All the works in this exhibition are responses to Warhol. The very title of the “Diamond Dust” portfolio draws attention to this. Like Warhol, these artists use crisp, vivid and memorable images (drawn from everyday culture) as the basis of their ideas. Our familiarity with images of Elvis and The Beatles, for example, is so ingrained that Peter Blake can reduce them to the near invisibility of white on white, yet we still recognise them. Blake’s images trigger associations, ranging from Kazimir Malevich’s ground breaking White on White paintings begun in 1917, to pop artist Richard Hamilton’s cover for The Beatles’ 1968 White Album. Warhol knew that the camera and mass media made all images increasingly equalized and interdependent. Linder’s portrait “Mon coeur ne bat que pour Morrisey” contains processes and selections linked to Warhol’s work: it is a silkscreen print - incorporating diamond dust - derived from a photograph taken by the artist of a celebrity. Yet it also tells us that Morrisey’s visual image is to some extent modeled on that of early Elvis, another Warhol subject. Photography and digital technology speed up the processes of making and circulating images. Peter Saville slows down this process. His Waste Paintings are made by digitally reprocessing and recycling his earlier work as a successful and influential graphic designer (work often incorporating elements pirated from art history), thus turning time back on itself. This cross-referencing between images surrounding us makes it hard to maintain old distinctions between “high” art and everyday culture. This may lead to a democratisation of art. Equally it could lead to a blanket aestheticisation of everyday life where everything is judged in terms of style and surface appearance. Simon Periton suggests this in “Eclipse”, where the anarchists’ symbol is converted into a streamlined corporate logo. Despite the expansion of choices available today, increasingly there are no substantial differences between this and that brand of detergent or breakfast cereal, between this and that political party, between this and that TV channel. Social life becomes a matter of style choices (“lifestyle”) when Peter Liversidge asks us to “Just Think About the Good Things in Life”. We are enticed by surface appearance (the glitter of diamond dust), only to find that the differences lurking are as insubstantial as white on white. Extract from an essay by John Calcutt, 2004 Events Launch
of new prints Artists
Talk Featured
Artists For further information and images please contact Sarah-Manning Cordwell: T 0131 557 2479 gallery@edinburgh-printmakers.co.uk www.edinburgh-printmakers.co.uk In association with the Paul Stolper Gallery, London Edinburgh Printmakers Gallery is one of Scotland's foremost gallery spaces devoted to contemporary fine art original prints - most of which are made in our studio. Some of the most established artists working in Scotland use our studio alongside recent graduates, professional artists and many printmakers from all over the world, who come to use the facilities on offer. We have four print browsers - over 500 prints - visitors can view an amazing range of the best contemporary prints available in Scotland. We have highly knowledgeable gallery staff on hand to help and answer any queries about the artists, their working syles and subject matter.
Exhibition Programme To complement the work on show by the resident artists we have a rolling programme of exhibitions representing the whole spectrum of contemporary graphic art. Previous exhibitions have ranged from the graphic works of artists such as Marc Chagall , David Hockney, Matisse and Picasso to contemporary American prints by such artists as - Andy Warhol and Jim Dine - to the wealth of talent that exists in Scotland itself. The Gallery and Studio are very centrally situated being only a few minutes walk from both the railway station, central bus station and the main shopping and cafe areas. Our Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm
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