KIMBERLEY TURNER
Talk Back (2022)
This project explores conversations that are imagined, esoteric or overlooked. Conversations you tell yourself or maybe invent with others, become stories that are told repeatedly over time until the imagined becomes ‘real’. The story itself can become secondary to the act of telling and listening. A story is an act, a collection of feelings and an interaction, a vehicle that facilitates connection, learning and stirs all manner of feelings within the teller and the listener.
The painting component of this work explores the conversation of graffiti writers and those who paint the wall, fence, bridge, etc., blank again. Both painters are communicating a defiant expression. The graffiti writer defies the limitation of using another’s property without permission by painting on the wall. Those who paint the wall despite it being sprayed repeatedly are also defiantly communicating ‘I won’t accept this; I want the wall blank!’.
Talk Back (2022), watercolour on paper
"The glass component is an exploration of a childhood memory, of an imagined conversation. The engraved lines on the glass recall the markings that bugs leave on the bark of trees when they eat into it, as young children my sibling and I used to say this was how the bugs left each other messages, warnings and stories."
Talk Back (2022), cold-worked glass