SPEAKEASY - CONFUSION OF TONGUES
OLIVIA TURNER
26 MARCH – 1 APRIL
The second in the SpeakEasy series presents Olivia Turner's Confusion of Tongues
Olivia Turner is an artist based between Gateshead and Newcastle. Her diverse practice includes sculpture, drawing, video, printmaking, and performance. She is currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at Newcastle University, recipient of the Research Excellence Academy Studentship. Since 2017, she has been working with the Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research. Her recent exhibitions include: The Body (2020-1) Round Lemon, Online; New Sculpture (2019) Cheeseburn Sculptures Gardens, Northumberland; Women and Power (2018) Cragside, National Trust; A Seat at the Table (2018) Gallery North, Newcastle; Reality Check (2017) The NewBridge Project, Gateshead; Circus Between Worlds (2016) Glasgow International; DECAPOD (2016) AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on- Trent.
SpeakEasy is a brand new programme of 5 x 1-week exhibitions of digitally printed posters, displayed in the Print Window of AirSpace Gallery, for visual creatives to reflect on and respond to the issues of our day. SpeakEasy comes from a place of protest and an urgency to speak out and be heard. Inspired by the print revolution, which gave platform to voices that were unheard, reaching an audience of the hitherto under (or selectively) informed. Well into the mid‐fifteenth century, books remained printed by hand, and were thus harder to obtain. Exposure to books and their information was predominantly a privilege of the wealthy, that is until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Gutenberg's invention revolutionised western culture in ways that would help shape and spread political and ideological change, and encourage revolution.
SpeakEasy believes in the power of the artist's voice, in the power of the message and in the power of print.
Confusion of Tongues is a letter addressed to the eponymous declarations of cis anatomists who have journeyed into the unclassified territories of a woman’s body to claim and name it for themselves. This work seeks to highlight the disjuncture between what is felt and embodied and how our bodies are visually and verbally medicalised and re-presented back to us. Paternalistic medicine has too long been the mediator between patient voice and body and this work feels a different kind of language to reclaim the body with and attend to its sensual reality.
- Olivia Turner, 2021
- Olivia Turner, 2021
Olivia Turner is an artist based between Gateshead and Newcastle. Her diverse practice includes sculpture, drawing, video, printmaking, and performance. She is currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at Newcastle University, recipient of the Research Excellence Academy Studentship. Since 2017, she has been working with the Wellcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research. Her recent exhibitions include: The Body (2020-1) Round Lemon, Online; New Sculpture (2019) Cheeseburn Sculptures Gardens, Northumberland; Women and Power (2018) Cragside, National Trust; A Seat at the Table (2018) Gallery North, Newcastle; Reality Check (2017) The NewBridge Project, Gateshead; Circus Between Worlds (2016) Glasgow International; DECAPOD (2016) AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on- Trent.
SpeakEasy is a brand new programme of 5 x 1-week exhibitions of digitally printed posters, displayed in the Print Window of AirSpace Gallery, for visual creatives to reflect on and respond to the issues of our day. SpeakEasy comes from a place of protest and an urgency to speak out and be heard. Inspired by the print revolution, which gave platform to voices that were unheard, reaching an audience of the hitherto under (or selectively) informed. Well into the mid‐fifteenth century, books remained printed by hand, and were thus harder to obtain. Exposure to books and their information was predominantly a privilege of the wealthy, that is until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Gutenberg's invention revolutionised western culture in ways that would help shape and spread political and ideological change, and encourage revolution.
SpeakEasy believes in the power of the artist's voice, in the power of the message and in the power of print.
