Alison Turnbull: Houses into Flats

Exhibitions

2 September - 8 October 2000

This exhibition by British artist Alison Turnbull (b.1956), comprised a series of twenty-eight paintings made over the preceding three years. Inspired by architectural plans, sections and elevations, the paintings featured diagrams of public and domestic buildings floating freely against coloured fields. The buildings, most of which Turnbull had never seen, were sourced from an eclectic range of books, maps and the internet. Through her technique of layering and repeatedly abrading the surfaces of her paintings, Turnbull subjected each architectural blueprint to a kind of archaeology. Subjects included a town hall, chapel, villa, apartment, lighthouse, factory, bank, and asylum. Turnbull likened the series to building an imaginary town or evoking the activities and rituals that make up a life.

Alison Turnbull’s wall work Moon is one of the site-specific commissions that was made for Milton Keynes Theatre Foyer, immediately next door to Milton Keynes Gallery, funded during the construction of the building by the Percent for Art scheme.