A touring exhibition in which leading contemporary artist Kurt Jackson walks in the footsteps of JMW Turner to visit the location of his iconic images; to track down the exact viewpoint, to see for oneself how it differs or reflects the source material.
JMW Turner made a series of trips to the South West during the early part of the 19th Century in search of ‘the picturesque’. His goal was to produce works that could then be reproduced and sold to the public.
In this exhibition leading contemporary artist Kurt Jackson picked a dozen of these locations to discover the extent of Turner’s artistic choices. Whether a building was ignored, has since been hidden by a development or been obliterated is of interest. A river has maybe been shown to be of immense size or is now banked by concrete, denatured or is just a small stream lost under 200 years of tree growth. Harbour walls and cliffs are exaggerated; wreckage was spilled on beaches where now tourists spread their towels and sun cream.
This body of work was shown at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter in 2016, and with new and previously unseen additions, the exhibition toured to the Jackson Foundation Gallery, St Just Cornwall from March 24th – April 21st and July 4th – August 18th 2018.
For more information and images from this exhibition, please visit the Jackson Foundation Gallery website.
Kurt Jackson – Revisiting Turner’s Tourism
10 September to 4 December 2016.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum,
Exeter, EX4 3RX.
24 March – 18 August 2018.
Jackson Foundation Gallery,
North Row, St Just, Cornwall, TR19 7LB.
