carcass › Nick Turvey

Surrogate
2009. Vinyl rubber. 51 x 24 x 24 cm.

The Incarnate series began with variations and elaborations of a basic undulatory form, much like musical variations on a theme. This base form is a proxy ( or idealised) human body, and the variations aim to catalogue possibilities for the human body considered as an object, both in terms of its constituent materials and their associated properties (an idea that relates to the medieval system of ‘Humours’), but also in the body’s role as a symbol or prop in fetish, myth and propaganda.
Surrogate
2009. Vinyl rubber. 51 x 24 x 24 cm.

The Incarnate series began with variations and elaborations of a basic undulatory form, much like musical variations on a theme. This base form is a proxy ( or idealised) human body, and the variations aim to catalogue possibilities for the human body considered as an object, both in terms of its constituent materials and their associated properties (an idea that relates to the medieval system of ‘Humours’), but also in the body’s role as a symbol or prop in fetish, myth and propaganda.
Nereid
2009. Plaster. 51 x 23 x 23 cm.
Nereid
2009. Plaster. 51 x 23 x 23 cm.
Nereid
2009. Plaster. 51 x 23 x 23 cm.
Posy
2009. Stainless steel & lacquer. 320 (w) x 320 (d) x 320 cm (h)

Project for Spitalfields. Flowers are not only a reminder of the mathematics that lurks beneath appearances, but have also always been potent symbols. The title invites the viewer to use that language of flowers to unpick the history of this place.
Genius Loci
2009. Seaweed. 400 x 130 x 40 cm.
Ovoid
2008. Steel & bitumen. 14 m (dia.) x 6 m (h).
At high tide, water will slowly begin to spill over the edge, building in volume until it becomes a thunderous cascade. The void is filled and, for a brief time, the sculpture disappears completely. But, as the tide falls, the vessel drains and emerges again, in an endless cycle of renewal, a reminder of change as the only reality.
Ovoid
2008. Steel & bitumen. 14 m (dia.) x 6 m (h).
Project for Belfast. Developed in association with Dewhurst Macfarlane. Shortlisted for lead artwork commission in the Titanic Quarter development.
A giant steel vessel, an ambiguous hybrid of rusty spaceship, lotus bud and industrial relic, seems to hover on the water. As the tide rises, it is slowly submerged and, as this happens, object is transformed into void. Eventually, with waves rippling around its rim, the sculpture becomes a massive, paradoxical hole in the water – a dark, resonant absence, a space of memory, of loss and forgetting, histories both personal and collective.