This book was published in conjunction with the 2010 exhibition by Gavin Turk at the CAC Malaga.

En Face presents the 72 busts deriving from his installation, created in an interactive performance that took place in April 2010 in the artist’s London studio. For The Bust Party, as it was known, Turk invited a group of people who manipulated the wet clay of the 72 busts depicting the artist. The public thus became part of the creative process through being given the chance to add their own mark to a work in process. Turk’s intention was to suggest the idea of art as authorless, the result of a collaborative effort by a group of people whose involvement was not just limited to the interpretative task of looking at the work but who could also touch it and put themselves in the artist’s place.

The result was En Face, a title derived from the French word “en face”, which Turk used to create a play on words in order to describe a situation in which the viewer is confronted with the work of art and is capable of extracting and re-printing his or her own personal mark directly onto it. Also notable are the titles that Turk has given to each of the busts and which are anagrams of his own name, again emphasising his interest in questioning the value of authorship and identity. These titles include Raving Kut, 2010, Gavring Tuk, 2010, and Gun Irk Vat, 2010. All use the letters of his name but rearranged to the extent that they barely relate to the original.