Gavin Turk produced this print for The London Group Portfolio, a portfolio of prints by eleven artists which was published by The Paragon Press in 1992. There is no thematic link between the works or the artists in the portfolio other than the fact that they were based in London at that time.
Turk had taken a series of photographs of his own arm, hand, leg, torso and head in flasks of water. He used one of these images to produce a screenprint for the portfolio and had his arm re-photographed by photographer Sue Omerod. The artist’s hand and forearm are magnified by the glass and water and initially it appears as though the artist’s arm is literally preserved as a specimen. This piece could be read as a playful comment on the value placed on the ‘artist’s hand’ by institutions such as museums which preserve and catalogue the work of artists, the exaggeration of scale corresponding to the exaggeration of the importance of the artist.
‘Other Men’s Flowers’ is a portfolio of textual works by 15 leading British based artists. Commissioned by Joshua Compston in 1994, works in the portfolio are restricted to letterpress printing and a standard scale of 47 x 61 cms. The title ‘Other Men’s Flowers’ is taken from a quote by French Renaissance writer Montaigne “I have gathered a garland of other men’s flowers and nothing is mine but the cord that binds them.”