A flower, a sunset and a landscape.
Driving through the south of France, late in the summer, we passed through fields of sunflowers, so late in the season they were all dead, wilted, not bought nor sold, still standing tall, thousands of dead flowers, death still standing tall.
I drove through the Alps and across the Swiss boarder, the landscape changed from winding French roads to giant hills, vast landscapes and big open skies. Familiar and foreign at the same time. I thought about America, I thought about Australia, the same feeling.
I remember driving from Sydney to Byron Bay one New Year’s Eve. I was 18, we drove to party in a field to bring in the year. I remember the feeling of new life, I remember the sun setting and rising in what felt like a minute.
I think a lot about memory, my grandmother growing old with Alzheimer's, me forgetting where I parked all the time.
Often a memory is sparked by an image, a feeling of something familiar, a person you knew, a place you’ve been. I collect images, I take photos of everything, the memories, not necessarily a moment, not necessarily a photograph.
Adam Turnbull is an Australian-born, New York-based artist exploring a multidisciplinary practice of art making, design, and publishing. He is a co-founder of the art book publisher Pacific and exhibits his work internationally.
Turnbull’s recent body of work, The City is a Flower, explores the reproduction of found and taken images to create fragmented narratives within the mediums of painting and sculpture. His 2D aluminium wall pieces and sculptures are worked into by hand, creased and folded, warped and skewed, until common, identifiable imagery is remade into a unique object representing an occurrence. Blurring the line between painting and sculpture, the works in the exhibition act as a roadmap—a flower, a sunset and a landscape transport the viewer through specific moments in the artist’s memory of driving, the movement between two locations, the moments in between the A–B.
His forthcoming publication The City is a Flower documents street scenes in New York City over the past several years and informs the visual language of his current work.
Adam’s publishing work is held in the Whitney Museum Library, the Museum of Modern Art Library, Princeton University Library and the New York Public Library. Adam has spoken at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair. Throughout 2019 his work for the collaborative project Imaginary Concerts with artist Peter Coffin and publisher Anthology Editions was on view with the Type Directors Club New York traveling exhibition in Poland, New York, Spain, Japan, Belgium & Canada.
Adam lives in Brooklyn, New York and works internationally.