Gavin Turk

Motor Oil, 2015

Oil on canvas

70.2 x 70.5 cm

Courtesy the Artist

This work was donated by Gavin Turk in support of Art For Your World and was available to buy at Sotheby's in October 2021. 

Oil Sump Painting can be interpreted as a void, an empty square, or a reset - a nod to Kazimir Malevich's infamous Black Square, 1915. Gavin Turk recalls a visit to The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, where he experienced the painting itself.  "The black surface was so cracked and elaborately patterned through the process of time. The dry and ancient paint looked like cracked earth. This work, a historic abstract and conceptual painting was now a pure reflection of nature. It made me feel a real awareness of history, time and the environment and the fact that everything is always changing." - GT

Oil Sump Painting is made from the oil drawn from a retired transit van engine, once a fluid traveling around the engine picking up burnt carbon particles, now painted on to a square canvas panel, a material at the end of its human usage and destined for the disposal has now been picked up and used as the pigmented paint.   

Environmental challenges through human's misuse and overexploitation of common resources have destabilised the natural balance, Gavin Turk's work acts as a flag, as a protest statement with the ever-witty presence of his surrealist expression - "It's painting with oil, does that make it an oil painting? Eh?"