DAVID TURLEY: HOUSE PLANT CARE

8 Holland Street is excited to present DAVID TURLEY: HOUSE PLANT CARE, a new exhibition showcasing a selection of paintings from a wider series, each based on a small photograph from a found book of the same name. A chance street find, the book contains an A-to-Z of 168 house plants, which Turley has been translating sequentially into paintings. A practical manual published in 1986, the book offers guidance on how to identify, clean, handle, protect and display the plants.

In Turley’s hands, these instructions begin to shift, becoming a way of thinking about the act of painting itself. Made in oil, watercolour, wax crayon and pencil on paper, the works echo their source images while moving away from botanical documentation or direct still life. Leaves, stems, flowers and pots are reworked. The plants become subjects through which Turley considers daily rhythm, repetition, and the circularity of time. Found forms are translated through surface, atmosphere, material and memory. He treats the found image not as something to repeat, but as something to spend time with.

David Turley (b. 1977, Australia) completed an MA at RMIT Melbourne before relocating to London in 2011. Turley’s multidisciplinary work moves across painting, drawing, sculpture, text, print and found objects and is an exploration of practice itself, interconnecting ideas of materiality, gesture, repetition and personal narrative with everyday experience. His work often unfolds through extended series and accumulative processes, allowing the incidental to gather meaning over time.

Turley has exhibited widely in Australia and the UK. His work has been presented, developed and supported through institutions including Jerwood Space, the Royal Society of Sculptors, Freelands Foundation, Hastings Contemporary, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Fremantle Arts Centre, the Australian Experimental Arts Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts Studio in Tokyo.