Gavin Turk talks about Holy Eggs
We spoke with renowned conceptual artist Gavin Turk about the process behind his new series of sculptural editions, Holy Eggs, published by Manifold Editions. Turk’s work has been exhibited extensively around the world, including New York, Hong Kong, London, Venice and Basel, and his work is included in major international public and private collections.
“I think I’ve always been interested in eggs. Somehow the egg not only is something that is the beginning, middle and end, and the story of birth and a story of death, but also somehow as a psychoanalytical object, it starts to talk about the fact that we have ideas in our head that come up in the process of seeing something. As we see something, we’re already feeling something, already involved in something; there’s something that guides the eye.
Originally, I was making work on canvas and using the paint and stabbing into the canvas. Then I started branching out and making stuff which used metals and various other materials, and then I suddenly thought, “what happens if you use paper?”
Lucio Fontana, what he does is he actually takes an egg shape, and he punctures it. In a way I found that absolutely perfect, because the egg is something made to be punctured, or certainly it’s made as a doorway, something to come out of. What he also does is he somehow introduces the idea of space in front of and behind the picture.”