Everyday objects become venerated in classic still-life scenes whose minimal format and subdued palette express a dry wit characteristic of Turk’s diverse body of work. Each painting’s title reads like a laundry list of its contents, giving the show a thorough, archival quality. Depicted are various vessels against a blank setting, their presence both enigmatic and candid like an unexplained time capsule.
We attended the private view on 14 March and asked the audience, what’s your hot take?
HOT TAKE 1: I noticed everything was empty. It doesn’t show the eggs, doesn’t show the liquid inside the transparent bottle, nothing. They’re all receptacles as well. They’re all disposable. We have a lot of plastic on the planet, and it makes that very clear.
HOT TAKE 2: Everything is very muted in colour, almost bland. It’s a little gloomy, actually.
HOT TAKE 3: It’s definitely calming in a weird way.
HOT TAKE 4: I watched him make one of them and he explained to me why he was doing it. The way Andy Warhol did Campbell’s Soup; if he didn’t do that, we probably wouldn’t still have Campbell’s Soup today, it probably would have [been discontinued], and it’s kind of the same situation.
Over time, some of these things won’t be around anymore. First of all, single-use plastic won’t be allowed. These are things we recognise even without labels. I think he’s just making a comment on the world today and what we all recognise – in England, anyways.
HOT TAKE 5: What’s striking about it is how simple it is. Everything about it.
HOT TAKE 6: I guess there’s something really accessible about them. I know what they are, but because they don’t have labels they’re almost more beautiful because I can see the forms and appreciate them.
HOT TAKE 7: It’s also a comment on all the shit we have in our lives. Crap, you know.
HOT TAKE 8: Very contemporary, aren’t they, with contemporary subjects. The loo cleaner. I think he has moved on from all his sculptural work to provocate modern, everyday stuff. It’s like the way Andy Warhol picked up contemporary materials and used them as works of art.
HOT TAKE 9: It’s clever, it’s funny. It’s ironic – like that’s a household object but you’re turning it into something that looks more than what it is. I really like it. I’d have one on my wall.
HOT TAKE 10: It definitely has a sense of humour, and is dark at the same time. A dark sense of humour.
HOT TAKE 11: I feel like it’s light-hearted, I don’t really think there is much darkness to it.
HOT TAKE 12: I mean admittedly that one’s a little bit lunatic-asylum with the green. Otherwise they’re pretty cheerful. This one looks like supermarket lighting, like pretty normal. There are some nice bright colours though, too.
HOT TAKE 13: It’s interesting how some of the frames are really classic. They’re all so different as well. I think the frames are funny, it’s like completely the polar opposite vibe to the artwork, which again brings back the irony.
HOT TAKE 14: This is all based on waste; what we throw away. I like the way they’re all grouped together. When you think about it, these are quite beautiful objects, but we throw them in the bin everyday. Aesthetically, they’re really nice to look at.
You can also play this game – what we have been doing – of guessing what was in them. I like the subtleness of it as well. There’s a softness. I also like the way there’s nothing in the background and they look really good in the frames as well.
HOT TAKE 15: The frames are so funny, they’re really funny. Like that one’s quite, sort of, bling-y.
HOT TAKE 16: It’s true, we throw a lot of beautiful things away and we don’t refill it.
You can at least do it with perfume, you can get refills so as not to throw away the bottle. It’s becoming more popular. It’s a shame, because when you look at some of the perfume bottles and how nice they are. They’re very tactile and have a good weight.
We go back to when milk bottles were glass, before plastics. When we were kids, everything was glass and delivered in your doorstep.
HOT TAKE 17: I like the scale and the framing, the way they are presented. I love the idea an I don’t understand why someone hasn’t done that before: making us think about what we’re using, and in such a luxury environment. He’s got that reach that he can get it out there.
Personally I just long to see things like this. There’s so much rubbish in contemporary art, you see it all the time, but there’s a lot of real gems. Considering it’s bits of plastic and tin, I just love it all the more.
He obviously eats too much salt. Should watch his heart. But they’re really great.
That kind of framing really takes it back to the Old Masters. It’s been done right. So again, attention to detail and just the whole thing is really well executed.
HOT TAKE 18: Maybe lonely. When I see them, they’re anonymous, without labels, there’s no context at all.
HOT TAKE 19: I got a kind of gloominess and quietness; abandonment maybe, but they have been arranged at the same time. Somebody had to arrange them like that so they weren’t always alone.
HOT TAKE 20: Second-impressionism. I don’t mind it at all. I mean, I love his work and I do my research. Reminds me of Morandi.
I’m happy that he didn’t really copy them. There’s a painterly style there.
HOT TAKE 21: Fair to middling. They could have been painted better. So-so, not bad. Better than not bad and better than so-so. Better than a kick in the nuts.
HOT TAKE 22: I think it’s very interesting. It’s a kind of version of this Italian painter called Morandi. It’s Morandi and this poetry about Morandi that talks about observing and doing still lifes. He makes a kind of joke from using these everyday ugly objects like this plastic bleach and toilet cleaner and that works very well. As a painter I like more this idea of making paintings that are for the brain like this, not just for the eyes. It’s like to really enjoy the flavour of the pasta.
On view through 10 May, 2024 at Ben Brown Fine Art
12 Brook’s Mews
W1K 4DG, London
more info here
