Gavin Turk was denied an MA certificate by the Royal College of Art in 1991. For his degree show he hung a fake English Heritage blue plaque on the wall that read: 'Borough of Kensington Gavin Turk Sculptor Worked Here 1989-1991', while his studio space remained conspicuously empty. By beginning his career with its metaphoric completion - in effect memorializing it - Turk announced his artistic programme: a critique of authorship and the myth of 'the artist' within the history of the European avant-garde.

In the early 1990's Turk made paintings based on his own signature; self-reflexive comments on the value of an artist's name, as well as the authority of his own. With Piero Manzoni (1992) Turk plagiarized the Italian artist's signature and then signed his own name to authenticate the work. Satin (1992) a work consisting of Turk's signature on a strategically stained piece of paper is a wry commentary on Giacometti's habit of signing the used tablecloth in lieu of payment for a restaurant meal. Here again Turk questions the signature as a mark of worth and authenticity.

In 1993 Turk exhibited his sculpture Pop at a hired space in London through dealer Jay Jopling for a show entitled 'Collected Works 1989-1993' The piece is a life-size waxwork portrait in a vitrine of Gavin Turk as Sex Pistol Sid Vicious appropriating the posture of Warhol's painting of Elvis as an armed cowboy. As a continuation of Turk's self-memorializing plaque, Pop announces the metaphoric death of the artist and, by extension, of the avant-garde through its parody of 'the artist' as an embalmed pop icon.

In 1995 Turk participated in 'Young British Artists III' at the Saatchi Gallery, London. He recently showed a customized black glossed skip entitled Pimp in the 1997 'Material Culture' exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London.