Nick Turvey

Posy
2009. Stainless steel & lacquer. 320 (w) x 320 (d) x 320 cm (h)

Project for Spitalfields. Flowers are not only a reminder of the mathematics that lurks beneath appearances, but have also always been potent symbols. The title invites the viewer to use that language of flowers to unpick the history of this place.
Genius Loci
2009. Seaweed. 400 x 130 x 40 cm.
Eidola
2009. Polyurethane and stainless steel. 600 x 400 x 120 cm.

Sculpture commission for City Offices, London. A shimmering cloud of watery ripples is created from fifty custom-made, giant, fresnel lenses, which multiply and magnify the view of the street, transforming it into a piece of kaleidoscopic cinema.
Eidola
2009. Polyurethane and stainless steel. 600 x 400 x 120 cm.

Sculpture commission for City Offices, London. A shimmering cloud of watery ripples is created from fifty custom-made, giant, fresnel lenses, which multiply and magnify the view of the street, transforming it into a piece of kaleidoscopic cinema.
Eidola
2009. Polyurethane and stainless steel. 600 x 400 x 120 cm.
Sculpture commission for City Offices, London. A shimmering cloud of watery ripples is created from fifty custom-made, giant, fresnel lenses, which multiply and magnify the view of the street, transforming it into a piece of kaleidoscopic cinema.
Curved Glass
Solo exhibition

Museum of the History of Science

17th March – 17th May 2009

Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3AZ.
Tuesday – Friday 12.00 – 17.00 hrs.
Saturday & Sunday 10.00 – 17.00 hrs.

Image: Nothing Comes Into Being (detail)
SpinState
2008. Acrylic & stainless steel. 73 x 73 x 10 cm.
SpinState
2008. Acrylic & stainless steel. 73 x 73 x 10 cm.
Ovoid
2008. Steel & bitumen. 14 m (dia.) x 6 m (h).
At high tide, water will slowly begin to spill over the edge, building in volume until it becomes a thunderous cascade. The void is filled and, for a brief time, the sculpture disappears completely. But, as the tide falls, the vessel drains and emerges again, in an endless cycle of renewal, a reminder of change as the only reality.
Ovoid
2008. Steel & bitumen. 14 m (dia.) x 6 m (h).
Project for Belfast. Developed in association with Dewhurst Macfarlane. Shortlisted for lead artwork commission in the Titanic Quarter development.
A giant steel vessel, an ambiguous hybrid of rusty spaceship, lotus bud and industrial relic, seems to hover on the water. As the tide rises, it is slowly submerged and, as this happens, object is transformed into void. Eventually, with waves rippling around its rim, the sculpture becomes a massive, paradoxical hole in the water – a dark, resonant absence, a space of memory, of loss and forgetting, histories both personal and collective.
Big Blue
2008. Stainless steel, glass, water and dye. 250 x 250 x 50 cm.

Project for Bury Divisional Police Headquarters. A giant, blue lens, intentionally reminiscent of a magnifying glass, calls to mind the exploits of beloved, fictional super-sleuths. However, for visitors arriving on foot, the lens frames and magnifies the headquarters, and it is the police themselves that are presented for scrutiny, in a playful take on the idea of accountability.
RBS Bursary
2008. Two year award from the Royal British Society of Sculptors. Ten sculptors of outstanding talent and potential, selected by competition each year to receive free membership and participate in a curated exhibition at the RBS Gallery.

Image: SpinState (detail)
Some Things Occur by Necessity
2007. Lead Crystal. 30 x 26 cm.
Glass has been intimately entangled with the development of scientific thinking, from the alembics of the alchemists to the instruments of Hooke and Galileo. Here, the medium and process of working with hot glass has been used as a plastic, polydimensional algebra, a cloud chamber of tracks and traces frozen in massive thicknesses that bend light like gravity.
Some Things Occur by Necessity
2007. Lead Crystal. 30 x 26 cm.
Glass has been intimately entangled with the development of scientific thinking, from the alembics of the alchemists to the instruments of Hooke and Galileo. Here, the medium and process of working with hot glass has been used as a plastic, polydimensional algebra, a cloud chamber of tracks and traces frozen in massive thicknesses that bend light like gravity.
Mister Mark
2007. Lead crystal. 20 x 19 cm.
“..And when mind began to set things in motion, there was separation from everything that was in motion, and however much mind set in motion, all this was made distinct. The rotation of the things that were moved and made distinct caused them to be yet more distinct.” Anaxagoras
Indivisible and Unchangeable
2007. Lead crystal. 30 cm x 20 x 20 cm.
“The Greeks do not rightly use the terms coming into being and perishing. For nothing comes into being nor yet does anything perish, but there is mixture and separation of things that are. So they would do right in calling the coming into being mixture, and the perishing separation.” Anaxagoras
Hidden Dimensions
2007. Lead crystal. 38 x 38 x 8 cm.

The perceptual disruption of highly refractive, transparent materials can thus be understood as an intrusion of non-Euclidean space into our seemingly stable everyday world of three co-ordinates, or alternatively as macro-scale, involute, extra dimensions, what a mathematician might call manifolds.