Into the Breach with Ken Turner

Martin Holman





It is rare for an artist in his 90s to get a spot at the annual Glastonbury music festival.

Ken Turner, however, is not cast from a conventional mould. For decades, the St Ives art pioneer has taken his art to his audience.

This summer, his handiwork was part of the festival’s Block9 area that celebrates freedom of expression, diversity and protest with immersive sound and art installations. His contribution was a Tesla electric car that he had crushed by driving over the vehicle in a WW2-era Sherman tank.

As part of Turner’s latest exhibition, which anticipates his 100th birthday next summer, the Wharfside Art Hub in Penzance is showing the short film of the momentous event (until 31 October).

Working with Led by Donkeys, the political campaign group that famously lowered a banner reading “I crashed the economy” behind Liz Truss at a public speaking event, the nonagenarian characteristically put his ideas into spectacular action.

The war veteran donned fatigues and a helmet and slid into the tank cockpit. Then his co-driver opened the throttle and advanced on the unsuspecting Model 3.

Turner is a political artist. That is, he deals with social ideas. They emerge from a personal conscience troubled by contemporary conflicts on land and over the environment. Recent events on our planet have sadly kept him busy.

The results make up this new show, which opened on Sunday with, alongside the film, 17 large-scale paintings made this year alone.

Turner’s work expresses deeply-felt protest against violence and destruction. For him, art is a way of living as a critical human being. His instrument is not propaganda, an outdated language he believes that is ultimately counter-productive. Instead, he uses forceful imagery to encourage thought and discussion.

Rather than see graphic representations, viewers sense the physical drama of life forms under immense duress, from war or the scarcity of vital resources. Colour, form, gesture and material, the essence of painting, generate the strong visual impact.

The composition of “Nature Crying Out” looks fragmented, as if the ground has fissured in a disastrous cataclysm. At first the artwork looks abstract. Clutches of diverse shapes, crusty with plaster, clash and collide in low relief.

Turner applies a gypsum layer to raw canvas, handling the texture as if in search of the picture. As the surface dries he introduces bold acrylic colours that infuse edges with energy. Just as his images come from a lifetime’s experiences, they also rely on a kind of conversation with materials.

“I listen to what the paint tells me,” he says, adding that the reply often points in directions he was not expecting. Nevertheless, he follows. That engagement with making supplies the strength of his painting. It communicates visually with the audiences and activates our response.

Details appear, such as trees and buildings caught in the turmoil. Is the scene falling inward or exploding beyond its frame? “Feelings are very important,” he says. “If you have strong ideas, you have an empathy, a deep sense of emotional intelligence.”

Inevitably, the plight of displaced communities in the Middle East is also a subject, provoking his most ardent images.

Turner has no time for the profit-driven priorities of today’s authoritarian leaders, whether of nations or global enterprises. His focus is altruistic, highlighting global perspectives he believes humanity should be concerned with. His career has always dealt with big themes, often on a big scale.

As painter, performer, organiser and provocateur, Turner has animated audiences from London’s ICA to the Edinburgh Festival during his long career.

Inspired by experimental theatre and legendary director Joan Littlewood in the 1960s, he broke traditional boundaries to bring visual artists and public together.

He masterminded temporary installations of huge inflatable structures. Set up in parks and city squares, they were sites for spontaneous discovery and performance. Visitors were immersed in flexed and cambered interior spaces that triggered the imagination.

Shaped by profound ideas, the projects helped change the popular perception of art by emphasising partnership in creativity.Art could be simultaneously fun, popular and serious.

Returning to painting, Turner settled in West Cornwall in 1993. Always a campaigner, his weapon is thought through articulate imagery rather than overbearing slogans. At 99, neither his energy nor his commitment to the power of painting have diminished.

 

see https://www.artcornwall.org/interviews/Ken_Turner.htm for interview from 2009