Gavin Turk: Betwixt

Bringing together several distinct bodies of work, this exhibition is grounded in what Turk calls “domestic anthropology”, which he describes as “the exploration of the domestic, with the question of value, and the act of re-noticing”. The title ‘betwixt’ is an archaic English word which evokes being caught between two conditions – a state Turk has explored for more than three decades through his interrogation of authorship, value and belief.

Works in the exhibition explore liminality, poised between presence and absence, arrival and departure. The paintings on view are familiar and comforting, yet quietly unsettling, each capturing the moment just after something has happened – a candle extinguished, a door left ajar, a selection of quotidian objects arranged on a tabletop. We feel we have seen them before, and yet something has shifted. Here, the domestic reveals itself as the original site of the uncanny – the unheimlich, literally the ‘unhomely’ – where our most familiar surroundings are those most capable of estrangement.

The works share a common structure – a recognisable motif, borrowed from art history or everyday life, is subtly destabilised until it becomes less a fixed image than a threshold. In this, they recall René Magritte’s Surrealist depiction of everyday objects.