Gavin Turk: Morandi Still Life - Catalogue Launch & Panel Discussion

Gavin Turk is a conceptual artist whose work interrogates ideas of authenticity, authorship, and the ‘myth’ of the artist. Drawing on Surrealist methodologies, his practice is self-reflexive and often knowingly parodic, questioning the art world’s value systems and the construction of the artist’s persona. Turk came to prominence with his postgraduate degree show at the Royal College of Art where he presented Cave (1991): an empty, whitewashed room bearing a blue heritage plaque inscribed with his own name. The installation announced a sceptical, postmodern view of artistic status and reputation, establishing the use of his name as a recurring device within his practice. It brought Turk immediate notoriety following the attention of Charles Saatchi and led to his association with the generation of Young British Artists (YBAs). Since then, Turk has developed a wide-ranging body of work that examines the cultural and economic frameworks surrounding art and its makers. He frequently reconfigures the visual languages of artists who precede him, using art history as material through which questions of originality, influence and inheritance are explored. Working across sculpture, painting, photography, and print, Turk has pioneered approaches now familiar within British contemporary art, including painted bronze, waxwork, art-historical appropriation, and the use of discarded materials.

Darian Leader is a British psychoanalyst practising in London, a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR), and a member/and former President of The College of Psychoanalysts-UK. He writes widely for a general audience on psychoanalysis and mental life, with books including The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression, Strictly Bipolar, What Is Madness? and Why Can't We Sleep?, as well as on visual art and the psychology of looking, notably Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us from Seeing. His latest book, Autisms, published by Penguin, draws on his clinical experience and the testimonies of autistic people to explore the many faces of autism and how it has been understood and treated.

Roberta Cremoncini is an art historian and curator, and Director of the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in London. She joined the Estorick Collection as Curator in 1997 and has been its Director since 2001, during which time she has curated numerous exhibitions and written texts and essays for catalogues, including Giorgio Morandi: The Collector's Eye. She has published widely, lectured at institutions such as the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, and is a regular contributor to Italian and British radio and television. In 2017 she was awarded the honour of Cavaliere dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in recognition of her work promoting Italian art and culture in the UK.