Artist Nicola Turner on horsehair, sheep's wool and her solo show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Nicola Turner is a UK-based artist who is best known for her use of horsehair and wool in her extraordinary, and often quite dark, sculptures. She originally trained as a theatre designer – working for the likes of the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Sydney Opera House – before doing a Fine Art MA in her fifties. Since then, her work has featured in a string of locations – most notably, the Courtyard at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2024. Currently, she has an installation at the chapel of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, as well as an upcoming exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art in London’s Hanover Square. In this episode, we talk about: discovering horsehair in a skip; naming her YSP show after a Shakespeare sonnet; her interest in death; her cancer diagnosis; visiting an abattoir as a student; her mother’s background in upholstery; creating site responsive pieces and using her intuition; how people respond to her work; moving from theatre design into fine art; opening her own studio in Bath, making clothes as a child; why she still writes to her school art teacher; and not being afraid to work at scale. Support the show
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