SHAN TURNER-CARROLL

Shan Turner-Carroll (b. 1987) is an Australian artist of Burmese descent. Deeply fascinated with unearthing tacit knowledge, his practice integrates mediums including photography, sculpture, performance and film. The artist’s practice interrogates both human and non-human nature, alternative forms of social exchange and interactions between art, artist and viewer: sending and receiving signals. His work can sing to snakes, serenade and signal with aliens, and barter with islands, rivers, and oceans. Looking towards the multiplicity of connections between body and landscape, site-specificity is key to his practice, not only in making, but rather in how an embodied methodology of making emerges upon each site and location. Turner-Carroll sees art-making as ritualistic and transformative, using play, humor and experimentation as key elements within his current practice.

Edge of the Garden

“These night visions emerge as apparitions found at the Edge Of The Garden, between dusk and dawn, as though of an alternate dream world. During the period of Covid isolation, I spent several months making wearable sculptures and photographing members of my family on the property I grew up on. More than simply adornment or even protection, each sculpture is an apparatus, designed to interact with the body.

The wearables were produced from materials found on the property, including objects from my past such as old sportswear, dance costumes, curtains, carpets, knives and flowers. The process of inventing, wearing and performing for the camera reveals a central part of my childhood growing up in rural NSW, where boredom was a constant threat and entertainment found its outlets in Easter hat parades, dance eisteddfods, nativity scenes and home-made music videos.”

— Shan Turner-Carroll