The exhibition will go on display from the 14th July 2027 until the 16th January 2028.
Best known for transforming overlooked and discarded objects into meticulously crafted works of art, Turk, once described as ‘art’s king of trash’, uses hand-painted bronzes, paintings and trompe l’oeil sculptures to challenge how we assign value.
This newly announced exhibition will see the artist entering into conversation with
both the building and its often-overlooked Building Archive. Spanning 1837 to the present, the Archive preserves traces of everyday Museum life – from a George III halfpenny found in dust in the Strong Closet in 2025, a quill perhaps dropped into a drawer by one of Soane’s students, and a set of buttons passed down from one Head Porter to another – providing evidence of the people who have lived, worked in and cared for the Museum.
Responding to the museum’s history, Gavin Turk will create new works, including teazels and a crow, which will be dotted around the Museum, camouflaged among the permanent collection. For example, in the The Foyle Space, a major sculptural installation titled Looking Glass takes the form of a dichroic glass cube. This is filled with detritus from Turk’s studio, a vision of waste, reframed as a relic, echoing the debris-filled time capsule left by Sir John Soane in his private bathtub which contained false teeth, receipts and broken glass.
Elsewhere, upstairs in the Exhibition Galleries, a selection of objects from the Building Archive will be on display, co- curated by Turk and Deputy Director and Inspectress of Sir John Soane’s Museum, Helen Dorey, who has cared for the Museum for the past forty years. Together, the new and archival objects will transform the Museum into a living conversation between history and the present, inviting visitors to consider collecting as an act of storytelling and preservation.
Talking about the exhibition, Gavin Turk said: “The building archive has introduced me to important piles of dust, which brings me to contemplate the metaphysical nature of dust. Dust is a metaphor for time itself. I see this as an opportunity toreveal and reframe the museum’s hidden narratives, through the act of care and curation.”
To find out more visit: https://www.soane.org/exhibitions/gavin-turk-soane