In this episode Gary Mansfield speaks to Nicola Turner (@nicolaturner.art)

Turner investigates dissolution of boundaries, liminal states, and continuous exchanges across ecosystems. In doing so, she explores the interconnection of life and death, human and non- human, attraction and repulsion. She combines found objects that hold traces of memory, with the shapes of living forms, and materials from organic ‘dead’ matter such as horsehair - a material used previously for bedding and furniture and, in that regard, alive with history and memory.

She explores how these materials give off energy forces, including how “dead” matter can provoke a visceral aversion and attraction, that can provoke new ways of looking. Her pieces are part of a vital and thriving microcosmos comprised of human and non-human agents which functions mostly beyond our conscious contemplation. Her work resonates with the notion of abjection, the capacity of the world to disorient and connect to primal instinct and, consequently, within the abject there is an acute awareness of melancholy and death. Amid this state of confusion and unsettlement, however, an affirmation of life’s forces is simultaneously allowed to arise.

Turner draws on her own experience of loss, bereavement and medical intrusions. Her work and the materials used provoke awareness of the entanglement of life, challenging individuality and creating awareness of the wider interconnected energies of which we are a part. 

For more information on the work of Nicola Turner go to

https://www.nicolaturner.art

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