The Meddling Fiend
Nicola Turner
mixed media including horsehair, wool, wood and brass
Nicola Turner’s large and visceral installations are often made in response to their surroundings. Here in the Annenberg Courtyard, Turner took the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds as her starting point and turned to the artist’s works for source material. In her own practice, Turner explores the boundaries between life, death and the liminal spaces in between, and it is these themes that she identified in Reynolds’s later works, where he would often juxtapose images of birth and renewal with darker forces. The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents (1786-88) is one of several paintings that Turner drew inspiration from. Hercules is depicted fighting a pair of snakes sent by the goddess Hera, while a dark, swirling mass creeps behind the baby and is held at bay by the sword of a nearby warrior. This same motion is echoed here in the gesture of Reynolds. As he holds his paintbrush aloft, organic tendrils, which Turner has twisted and stitched together, envelop him in a playful yet foreboding way, creating new spaces that connect to the theme of this year’s Summer Exhibition.
Turner uses found objects including grand piano legs, chair stuffing and even the contents of old mattresses. These objects in themselves hold traces of different histories and give new life to what would otherwise be discarded.*
From the exhibition
Summer Exhibition 2024
(June - August 2024)
...over 1,700 fabulous works of art by famous artists and members of the public.
Celebrate creativity at the Summer Exhibition, the perfect day out for art lovers.
Art and architecture in every medium will fill our galleries, spill out into our courtyard and onto Piccadilly. There will be works which will inspire, delight, move and entertain, all coordinated by sculptor Ann Christopher RA and her committee of leading British artists and architects.
[*Royal Academy]
Taken in the Royal Academy
The Meddling Fiend
Nicola Turner
mixed media including horsehair, wool, wood and brass
Nicola Turner’s large and visceral installations are often made in response to their surroundings. Here in the Annenberg Courtyard, Turner took the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds as her starting point and turned to the artist’s works for source material. In her own practice, Turner explores the boundaries between life, death and the liminal spaces in between, and it is these themes that she identified in Reynolds’s later works, where he would often juxtapose images of birth and renewal with darker forces. The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents (1786-88) is one of several paintings that Turner drew inspiration from. Hercules is depicted fighting a pair of snakes sent by the goddess Hera, while a dark, swirling mass creeps behind the baby and is held at bay by the sword of a nearby warrior. This same motion is echoed here in the gesture of Reynolds. As he holds his paintbrush aloft, organic tendrils, which Turner has twisted and stitched together, envelop him in a playful yet foreboding way, creating new spaces that connect to the theme of this year’s Summer Exhibition.
Turner uses found objects including grand piano legs, chair stuffing and even the contents of old mattresses. These objects in themselves hold traces of different histories and give new life to what would otherwise be discarded.*
From the exhibition
Summer Exhibition 2024
(June - August 2024)
...over 1,700 fabulous works of art by famous artists and members of the public.
Celebrate creativity at the Summer Exhibition, the perfect day out for art lovers.
Art and architecture in every medium will fill our galleries, spill out into our courtyard and onto Piccadilly. There will be works which will inspire, delight, move and entertain, all coordinated by sculptor Ann Christopher RA and her committee of leading British artists and architects.
[*Royal Academy]
Taken in the Royal Academy