“Dead matter still has a lot of agency, a lot of presence.”

Watch artist Nicola Turner talk about how she created her sculpture 'The Meddling Fiend' in the RA courtyard for the Summer Exhibition 2024.

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.

Turner uses sheep fleeces, chair stuffing, old horsehair mattresses and found objects including grand piano legs in her work. These objects in themselves hold traces of different histories and give new life to what would otherwise be discarded.

The Summer Exhibition 20204 runs from 18 June - 18 August 2024.

Find out more and book tickets: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhib...