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Meredith Turnbull: Together Meredith Turnbull: Together Working freely across the mediums of sculpture, photography, jewellery and video, Meredith Turnbull is an artist, writer and curator whose practice engages with the social and cultural structures of art. Her work draws on key developments from art historical movements that relate to the positioning and understanding of art in terms of its function and value including the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Deco and Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Pop Art. Employing materials and techniques drawn from the disciplines of fine art, craft and design, Turnbull’s fluid approach democratises the making and experiencing of art, demonstrating an ethos of inclusivity that is an important philosophical basis for her practice. In this way, she uses her art practice as an instrument to explore the ways that art operates within daily life through the modes of décor, design, and adornment. Together displays works made since 2020, a time marked by prolonged periods of lockdown, social isolation, and a radical re-evaluation of the way we live our lives. These unique conditions have changed our perception of the home and brought a new intensity to the relationships we form with our domestic spaces and how we choose to occupy them. The role of aesthetics in everyday life is a central tenant of Turnbull’s practice, and while previous work has engaged with ideas around materiality, creative processes and the agency of the object, her recent work brings a new immediacy and intimacy to these conceptual ideas. Harnessing the creative potential found in the home and using ready-at-hand art and craft materials, Turnbull’s photographic collages, tableaux photographs, jewellery, silk paintings, video and large scale ‘necklace’ sculptures displayed here present domestic life as a valid and necessary context for art. The need to make things and our innate desire to engage aesthetically with the world is an idea that has grounded Turnbull’s practice in recent years, influenced by feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz. Grosz’s work provides a context for Turnbull’s alertness to the potential for transformational moments in the everyday through art, and the intensification creativity brings to our experience of life. Previous page: Meredith Turnbull Mood Mirror Series 1 (colour field without objects) 2020 (detail) 40 x 30 cm inkjet print Right: Meredith Turnbull Mood Mirror Series 1 (pink shapes and flower paper) 2020 40 x 30 cm inkjet printCommonplace materials such as stickers, brightly coloured tape, plastic, cardboard, wire and paper off cuts feature in her latest work and are overt references to family life—in particular the reality of parenting a young child. Their inclusion positively cites the familial context as a potential site of creative production. This continues Turnbull’s interests in the concept of gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), a foundational concept of the influential early twentieth century German Bauhaus school of art and design (1919–33) that brings together all forms of creative practice such as art, craft, design and architecture to form a unified aesthetic language. Turnbull’s alignment of creativity with daily life reflects these long-held interests in the democratisation of art while affirming a worldview informed by feminist ideologies that reorientate concepts of value and power within forms of cultural production. Turnbull works with a visual language that is in dialogue with Modernism (repetition of circles, use of simple forms, abstract patterning, the grid) while incorporating techniques and materials more traditionally associated with craft practices, interior design and jewellery. The use of commonplace or accessible materials, as well as at times a deliberately ‘unfinished’ aesthetic, has precedents in her practice, most notably the commission Co-workers— Hanging sculpture for the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2013–14 exhibition Melbourne Now where Turnbull created a workshop designed to give gallery visitors the opportunity to create their own wearable sculptures made from wooden, paper and plastic components. The works presented in Together speak about family, identity, creativity, and love. Several are collaborations with both Turnbull’s daughter and mother and, at a time when families have been separated from each other, this simple act of using a rt as a shared touchstone is a poignant way to reconfigure connection. This aspect of intergenerational collaboration falls within Turnbull’s exploration of unconventional modes of making and thinking about art that free it from traditional concepts of hierarchy and expertise. The suite of new collaborative silk paintings are the outcome of a journey of discovery undertaken by the trio as co-collaborators to create works based on batik techniques her mother learnt over 30 years ago and rarely used since. This willingness to embrace unknown outcomes speaks volumes about the sincerity of Turnbull’s practice and her equal interest in both process and aesthetics. As a material register of the discoveries and decisions encountered throughout the collaborative process, these joyous works transform a personal experience into an aesthetic one, acting as a symbol for the possible and actual outcomes of this kind of social creativity. For over a decade Turnbull has been interested in the agency of objects in relation to one another within different contexts, pursuing ideas drawn from Russian Constructivist theorist Boris Arvatov (1896–1940) around the relational nature of objects and their agency as ‘co-workers’. Her latest work continues these explorations with objects that are intimately invested with personal significance as signifiers of motherhood and daughterhood (as well as signifiers of the decorative and ornamental), progressing her ideas into more personal territory. Turnbull’s fascination with form and materials and the ways they operate, change, and are understood across genres and disciplines is also guided by Grosz’s ideas around context (or ‘territory’ as she describes it). As a deliberate strategy to challenge established hierarchies within the art world (for example those value judgements made between art and craft, art and decor, art and design), Turnbull’s work often incorporates materials and techniques not normally associated with fine art, such as plastics, string, timber and gold and silversmithing. The reframing of materials to create something new is a generative action that can be re-enacted again and again through shifts in relations between objects and contexts. For example, a series of earrings made in 2021 that combine her young daughter’s brightly coloured beads and stickers with custom-made (by the artist) gold and silver fittings demonstrates these ideas at play; her daughter’s glittery rainbow hearts and flowers from the home craft table reappear as precious jewels in an acknowledgement that the joy derived from the beauty of aesthetics isn’t bound by the designations of what art is or isn’t. Turnbull’s light touch allows the original character of various materials to remain while simultaneously transforming them into something with a new vibrant energy. No distinction is made between the so-called mundane and profound, for categories are not fixed or exclusive. The use of the still life tableaux, which features in the larger photographs in the Mood Mirror series from 2020, evokes a domestic setting while echoing the shallow two-tier configuration of an altar (implying there is a deeper resonance to the spaces we inhabit and the objects we choose to have in our homes). Several works picture small pottery vases of flowers from her mother’s garden placed in front of test-piece paintings on silk also made by her mother. Other images combine mini sculptures made from modelling clay and plastic jewels with pigment dyed tissues and glittery stickers, and we see Turnbull’s daughter Roma’s hand appearing at the side of the image to hold up a thread of plastic beads. These simple, joyous images open our attention to ways that people find a sense of fulfillment through engagement with a range of creative actions and practices— for instance, gardening, craftwork, interior design, play. The works acknowledge the many ways in which anyone might seek a creative life, to feel and make meaning, however they choose. Turnbull’s work consistently draws attention to questions around creative practice and how it is structured, perceived and valued. Her recent work demonstrates her desire to explore the limits and definitions of art from a position of personal authenticity. This unpretentious approach is part of a push to democratise both the making and experiencing of art, a continuation of Turnbull’s ongoing desire to challenge the hierarchies of expertise and excellence which dominate established concepts of western art. Joanna Bosse 2022 Curator, Bayside Gallery Artist’s biography and acknowledgements Born in 1977, Meredith Turnbull is a Narrm/ Melbourne based artist, writer and curator. She completed a Bachelor of Art (Honours) in Art History at LaTrobe University in 2000, a Bachelor of Fine Art (Gold and Silversmithing) at RMIT University in 2005 and a PhD at Monash University in the field of Sculpture and Spatial Practice in 2016. She currently teaches in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University, and is represented by Daine Singer, Melbourne. With thanks to: Roma Turnbull-Coulter, Jenny Turnbull, Noel Turnbull, Ross Coulter, Jenny Hector, Tizita Horning and Mayani Rawicki for their assistance with this exhibition. Page 2: Meredith Turnbull Mood Mirror Series 1 (pink and blue with grey spot) 2020 (detail) 40 x 30 cm inkjet print Page 7: Meredith Turnbull Mood Mirror Series 2 (silk and ink test piece with green and purple vase) 2020 86 x 58 cm inkjet print Page 8: Meredith Turnbull Mood Mirror Series 1 (pink spots) 2020 (detail) 40 x 30 cm inkjet printBayside Gallery Brighton Town Hall Corner Wilson & Carpenter Streets, Brighton VIC 3186 T. 03 9261 7111 gallery@bayside.vic.gov.au bayside.vic.gov.au/gallery @baysidegallery Meredith Turnbull: Together 12 March to 1 May 2022Next >