Ken Turner, the 100-year-old artist who drove a tank over a Tesla last year, is still creating. With a new exhibition at Wharfside Arts Hub in Penzance, the painter, sculptor and performance artist reflects on a life devoted to making art accessible to the masses.
Life and Rebellion
Turner, who turned down a place at the Slade School of Fine Art because he didn't like the colour of the walls, has always pushed back against expectations. 'I'm not a revolutionary, I'm a simple rebel, really,' he says. In the 1960s, he moved from painting to socially conscious public art, creating giant inflatable sculptures decades before immersive art became popular. He was taught by Fernand Léger, friends with John Berger, and made frames for Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff.
Action Space and Performance
In the late 1960s, inspired by radical theatre director Joan Littlewood, Turner formed Action Space, an art collective that took art out of galleries and into communities. They created vast inflatable sculptures and used light, sound, movement and drama. Action Space still exists today as a charity working with learning-disabled artists. Last year, Turner drove a 15-tonne tank over a Tesla in a project with Led By Donkeys, a performance he sees as an indictment of corporate greed and rising fascism.
Painting and Legacy
Turner moved to Cornwall in the 1990s and rediscovered painting. His latest works, which deal with Gaza and the climate emergency, are 'big, grandiose, semi-abstract things, often chaotic, sometimes violent'. He believes museums should buy them because 'they instruct people, they're about the sadness of the planet, the development of cruelty and inequality'. At 100, Turner says making art is a necessity: 'If I didn't [make art], I'd die. It gives me life.'
Ken Turner at 100: A Century of Crashing Culture is at Wharfside Arts Hub, Penzance, to 4 August.
