Nicola Turner

(1967 Guildford, UK)

Nicola Turner is an artist known for creating large scale, visceral installations from wool and waste horsehair, often made in response to their surroundings. Using “dead” materials such as waste horsehair and wool alongside found objects, her works touch upon the history and “memory” of materials.  She explores how these materials give off energy forces, including how “dead” matter can provoke a visceral aversion and attraction.

Her work resonates with the notion of abjection, the capacity of the world to disorient and connect to primal instinct and, consequently, within the abject there is an acute awareness of melancholy and death. In 2024 she gained attention for her site responsive installation The Meddling Fiend which interacted with the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Courtyard of the Royal Academy, London, for the duration of the Summer Exhibition. With a background in set and costume design, Turner has worked with The Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Scottish Ballet, Royal Shakespeare Company and Sydney Opera House where she was the recipient of a Green Room Award. She graduated from Central St Martins School of Art & Design and Bath Spa University. She was  awarded the RWA Academy Award 2024 for her sculpture Klipp und Klapp. Turner has exhibited at Art Basel Unlimited 2025, Basel; Carvalho Gallery, New York; The Bomb Factory, London; The Royal Academy, London; Od Arts Festival, Somerset, DOOR, Amsterdam; and Skaftfell Arts Centre, Iceland. She founded Form-ica, an independent collective of artists. Turner is represented by Annely Juda Fine Art. She lives and works in Bath, UK. 

Gallery (from left) 

• Nicola Turner by Maxwell Attenborough 
• The Uninvited Guest from the Unremembered Past, Wells Cathedral 
• Tyntesfield installation 
• Klipp Und Klapp
• Fabric of Undoing, Carvalho, New York 2025
• Myth and Miasma, Iceland 2022
• Myth and Miasma, Iceland 2022
• The Meddling Fiend, Royal Academy London, 2024