JFK Turner: Fold & Retold

These are not abstract paintings, but images based on real things. Turner revisits his found objects through a variety of visual approaches, including isometric drawing, silhouettes and orthographic projections. The same object may be depicted from multiple angles and in different forms, creating a series of variations on a single subject.

Collected from the street, these objects are found and retold, reimagined, repeated and misremembered. Each version remains connected to the original, yet shifts with every retelling. Using humble materials and drawing on the textured, weathered surfaces of everyday life, Turner creates works that exist somewhere between image and object.

Retelling is not unique to painting. From Monet’s haystacks to Morandi’s still lifes, artists return to familiar subjects to discover new possibilities. Musicians do much the same. John Coltrane’s My Favourite Things takes a familiar melody and transforms it through repetition and improvisation. The original remains, but is continually reshaped into something new.

For Turner, the found object becomes a starting point rather than an end in itself. Through repetition and reconstruction, the familiar shifts into something unexpected. Each work is a version of the original and a new object in its own right: something found, something changed, and something retold

Originally from Manchester, Turner is now based in Lewes. He studied Fine Art at Southampton Institute and has exhibited with &Gallery since 2018.