mixed-media › Nick Turvey

Last Laugh – box set

2020. Mixed media. 30 x 10 10 cm.

A grace note to mark the end of this project. Gruesomely detailed. If you don’t know La Specola museum in Florence, then you have a treat in store.
Last Laugh – Robert

2018. Fibreglass and acrylic paint, with integrated video guidance system, battery powered PA and looped laughter track. 65 x 36 x 36 cm.
Last Laugh – Robert

2018. Fibreglass and acrylic paint, with integrated video guidance system, battery powered PA and looped laughter track. 65 x 36 x 36 cm.

Since my time in Pietrasanta, I have been fascinated by representing hair in sculpture. It’s about finding the appropriate system of abstraction, and the hand learning the gestures.
Last Laugh – Kim

2018. Fibreglass and acrylic paint, with integrated video guidance system, battery powered PA and looped laughter track. 65 x 36 x 36 cm.
Last Laugh – Kim

2018. Fibreglass and acrylic paint, with integrated video guidance system, battery powered PA and looped laughter track. 65 x 36 x 36 cm.
Last Laugh – Bashar

2016. Fibreglass and acrylic paint, with integrated video guidance system, battery powered PA and looped laughter track. 65 x 36 x 36cm.

We have all known bullies. They like to excuse it as having a laugh. But at what point will we draw the line, and say this is enough, it’s not funny anymore? At what point does tyranny itself become ridiculous?

Coinciding with a period that saw me erase myself from the internet, this was the first in a series of wearables, designed for performance, that turned into a 3 year dark project, in which I engaged with portraiture for the first time.
Mummy And Daddy
2014. Vitrine, wallpaper, model V2 rocket, model atom bomb and mixed media. 79 x 41 x 129 cm.

The Cowboys and Indians wallpaper that lines the floor of this vitrine was in my bedroom as a child. In retrospect it seems hardly accidental, living as we were in the shadow of Mutual Assured Destruction, another mythic confrontation.
Leviathan
2014. Mixed media. 104 x 134 x 13 cm.

Is this an autopsy or a life-saving operation? In/Out? Independence? Just like our parents, the nation state is more vulnerable than we like to think. Shout out to Thomas Hobbes.
Dieu et Mon Droit
2014. Bronze resin and mixed media, plywood, paint and flag. 66 x 100 x 84 cm.

Edwin Landseer’s allegorical animal portraits are a great source of inspiration, as are Bernini’s illusionist textures. This snarling armoured car is a piece of contemporary heraldry, reflecting the sense of entitlement that power creates.
Innocent (detail)
2014. Vitrine, wallpaper and mixed media. 79 x 41 x 129 cm.

In a dream I was making an artwork involving a battle tank and a pile of rubble. The solution was revealed to me by a man with a dead rabbit (Joseph Beuys, obviously), resulting in a series of vitrines. The title of this one alludes to Francis Bacon’s version of the painting by Velasquez, another portrait of power.
For Your Safety and Security
New Sculptures: Bugs, Warheads & Vitrines. Solo exhibition

Eleven Spitalfields Gallery

Curated by Peter Fleissig

4th July – 29th August 2014

11 Princelet Street
London E1 6QH

elevenspitalfields.com
020 7247 1816
Open Monday to Friday 12 -6, by appointment.
Life Sentence
2011. Mixed Media. 120 x 110 x 80 cm.
National Sculpture Prize
2011 National Sculpture Prize. Finalists exhibition.

Broomhill Art & Sculpture Foundation

June 1st 2011 – Feb 28th 2012

Muddiford Rd, Barnstaple, North Devon, EX31 4EX.
Open daily.

Image: Conscience
Conscience
2011. Bronze resin & nylon rope – 200 x 64 x 60 cm.

What interests me is the embodied nature of consciousness, the fact that our sense of ourselves is the product of a visceral, muscular materiality. Yet, at the same time, this body can seem like a prison, in which we are shackled by brutish desires and appetites. Identity is not monolithic. The brain and body are a parliament. It is a constant struggle, a dialogue, a story. We believe whatever we must, in order to continue living.
Conscience
2011. Bronze resin & nylon rope – 200 x 64 x 60 cm.

What interests me is the embodied nature of consciousness, the fact that our sense of ourselves is the product of a visceral, muscular materiality. Yet, at the same time, this body can seem like a prison, in which we are shackled by brutish desires and appetites. Identity is not monolithic. The brain and body are a parliament. It is a constant struggle, a dialogue, a story. We believe whatever we must, in order to continue living.
Conscience
2011. Bronze resin & nylon rope – 200 x 64 x 60 cm.

What interests me is the embodied nature of consciousness, the fact that our sense of ourselves is the product of a visceral, muscular materiality. Yet, at the same time, this body can seem like a prison, in which we are shackled by brutish desires and appetites. Identity is not monolithic. The brain and body are a parliament. It is a constant struggle, a dialogue, a story. We believe whatever we must, in order to continue living.
Sculpture Promenade
Group show.

The Fitzwilliam Museum

23rd March 2010 – 30th January 2011.

Ann Christopher, Angela Connor, Nick Hornby, Mike Lyons, Nick Turvey, Rob Ward.

Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RB

Image: Venus and Chief