Fiona Connor: I haven’t arrived yet, Closed Down Clubs | Maureen Paley
Doors are one of art history’s most enduring motifs. They’ve often been used as representing a portal between worlds - between the conscious and the unconscious. When closed, secrecy and restraint. When open - revelation. Either way - potentially uncanny.
Marcel Duchamp’s Door: 11, rue Larrey (1927), one of his most famous Readymades, was a totally uncanny two way door that was originally built into his Paris studio. Since then it was removed and has been reconstructed in various exhibitions. I’m sure the work inspired two artists who are showing in London right now: Fiona Connor and Gavin Turk.
Connor’s doors are firmly closed. They’re near-exact replicas of doors to clubs, bars and restaurants that have gone out of business. Readymades, just like Duchamp. She’s New Zealand born and based in Los Angeles: both places are represented in the six replica doors currently on show at Maureen Paley.
The only one I should have recognised was the one from The Glory, an east London gay pub I visited a few times over the years. But I realised, looking at it in the gallery, that I never noticed what colour it was (blue) at the time. Connor helps us to look again and reflect. But of course, the memories the work sparked came from what was behind that door… once.
More mystical and obscure is the British artist Gavin Turk’s show across town, which is a collection of near-photorealistic oil paintings of half open doors. The doors are all different, as are the flat, featureless landscapes half-revealed behind them. Duchamp is definitely an influence, and there’s something de Chirico-like too about Turk’s doors’ surreal stillness.
The works centre on “this idea of trying to escape,” Turk explains. “Opening a door and moving out - moving on. There’s a kind of psychological part of these door paintings, where I am suggesting a way of escaping… reality, or the difficulty of now.”
Personally, I stood in front of Connor’s blue door and realised I could never open it. With Turk’s, I wanted to step through the canvas, and go somewhere else. Both were revelatory, in their way.
Fiona Connor: I haven’t arrived yet, Closed Down Clubs is at Maureen Paley (London). 28 March - 16 May 2026