dialogue › Nick Turvey

Push Me Pull You
2015. 2-channel video. 9 mins.

A collaboration with Joanna Hogg, consisting of a conversation about whether and how we could collaborate on a piece of work, restaged in drag.

Image: Push Me Pull You – publicity composite
For Your Safety & Security – Madras Violet (detail)
2014. Vitrine, wallpaper, nylon and acrylic paint. 53 x 65 x 7 cm.

Weaponised insects are camouflaged to blend in with floral wallpaper.
All Alone Together – Bunker 2
2013. Corrugated iron, branches, sandbags, earth, plywood, hessian, black fabric,woollen coats, bolts, wire, string. 515 x 260 x 260 cm.

Three sculptural installations – claustrophobic, defensive spaces reminiscent of military bunkers – were built in the gallery, and individuals and groups in Harlow invited to make use of them. Here is an opportunity to examine the meaning of selfhood and togetherness, developing the idea of a community art gallery as a place of meeting and action.
All Alone Together – Bunker 1
2013. Concrete, aggregate blocks, mortar, plywood. 275 x 210 x 135 cm.

Three sculptural installations – claustrophobic, defensive spaces reminiscent of military bunkers – have been built in the gallery, and individuals and groups in Harlow are invited to make use of them. Here is an opportunity to examine the meaning of selfhood and togetherness, developing the idea of a community art gallery as a place of meeting and action.
All Alone Together – Bunker 2
2013. Corrugated iron, branches, sandbags, earth, plywood, hessian, black fabric,woollen coats, bolts, wire, string. 515 x 260 x 260 cm.

Three sculptural installations – claustrophobic, defensive spaces reminiscent of military bunkers – have been built in the gallery, and individuals and groups in Harlow are invited to make use of them. Here is an opportunity to examine the meaning of selfhood and togetherness, developing the idea of a community art gallery as a place of meeting and action.
All Alone Together – Bunker 3
2013. Wood, plasterboard, plaster, carpet tiles, doors, hinges, handles, locks, security cameras, paint, nails, screws, electrical conduit, switches, sockets, light fixtures, table, chairs, intercom system. 610 x 510 x 260 cm.

Three sculptural installations – claustrophobic, defensive spaces reminiscent of military bunkers – have been built in the gallery, and individuals and groups in Harlow are invited to make use of them. Here is an opportunity to examine the meaning of selfhood and togetherness, developing the idea of a community art gallery as a place of meeting and action.
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
2010. Pink Portuguese marble. 45 x 31 x 17 cm.

I like to use materials not so much as a medium, but more as a physical fact, poetically entangled with historical, political, and other associations. Working with marble in Pietrasanta, one is surrounded by the skills, traditions and examples of neoclassicism – heroic, dramatic, illusionistic. Yet this metamorphosis of the body into stone betrays a fundamental unease, a fear of the body’s messiness and complexity, which provided the context for my work. I have sampled or isolated elements of neoclassical style, unsettling yet strangely familiar, in the service of what I consider a blackly comic form of existentialism.
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
2010. Pink Portuguese marble. 45 x 31 x 17 cm.

I like to use materials not so much as a medium, but more as a physical fact, poetically entangled with historical, political, and other associations. Working with marble in Pietrasanta, one is surrounded by the skills, traditions and examples of neoclassicism – heroic, dramatic, illusionistic. Yet this metamorphosis of the body into stone betrays a fundamental unease, a fear of the body’s messiness and complexity, which provided the context for my work. I have sampled or isolated elements of neoclassical style, unsettling yet strangely familiar, in the service of what I consider a blackly comic form of existentialism.