Shan Turner-Carroll

Shan Turner-Carroll is an Australian artist of Anglo Burmese decent, based in both Sydney and regional New South Wales. Using photography, sculpture, installation and performance, he embodies the role of the trickster, magician or pilgrim. He uses common gestures, and everyday objects and acts, in alchemical ways and sees the process of art making as ritualistic and transformative.

Shan sees play, humour and experimentation as key elements within his practice. Through the use of the body, he has explored notions of what it is to be human and how this is informed by what is not human. Our current severance from the “animal” or natural world has been a deep thread that runs through his practice. He has produced work that looks at the human-centric experience and questions the myths and systems of thought that underpin these world views. Shan’s practice explores site-specificity and integrates mediums including photography, sculpture, performance and film.

Shan has exhibited throughout Australia, including: Artspace, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Murray Art Museum Albury, Newcastle Art Gallery, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Parramatta Artists Studios and Blue Mountains Cultural Centre. His work has also been exhibited internationally in New York, Japan, China, New Zealand, Iceland, Hong Kong and Burma.

In 2012 Shan received the Jennie Thomas Travelling Art Scholarship to undertake research in Myanmar. In 2013, he received a University Medal with Honours (First Class) and was shortlisted for the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist award, where he received the Nick Waterlow OAM Highly Commended Award. In 2014 he received an APA University Scholarship, which allowed him to complete a MFA (Fine Art) with The University of Newcastle and undertake a one year exchange with Parsons School Of Design, The New School, NY. During this same year he was awarded the Margaret Olley Memorial Scholarship.

Shan was a finalist in the 2017 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship at Artspace, and was also a finalist for the National Tertiary Art Prize, going on to win the Doctor Harold Schenberg Scholarship, Perth Institute Of Contemporary Art. At the start of 2021, Shan participated in a three month residency with Parramatta Artists studios and recently received a Creative Live Work Space tenancy with Brand X and the City of Sydney.