JOHNNY TURNER

Cosmos, 2020
Blue-grey granite, corten steel
1960 x 330 x 75mm (2960mm high including corten steel base)
Price on request

The most recent sculpture at Brick Bay by Johnny Turner is titled Cosmos. It was designed with the viewer and the act of looking in mind. When first observing Cosmos the eye is drawn up the 3metre length of granite which sits on a corten steel base and up skyward, to the stars, pointing up to the heavens. There is a calming, meditative, spiritual feeling evoked when viewing and touching the cool stone of Cosmos.

The classical form of Cosmos is similar to the shape of a tuning fork, an ancient tool with its two prongs that also has futuristic antennae-like quality for it works by releasing a perfect wave pattern to match a musician’s instrument. There is a type of therapy using the tuning fork, it works similarly to acupuncture, using sound frequencies for point stimulation instead of needles and is believed to help release tension and energy and promote emotional balance.

Turner’s Abstract Modernist aesthetic draws on the work of Isamu Noguchi or Barbara Hepworth, also Brancusi whose Bird in Flight is a big influence on Turner's endeavour to capture and portray movement in stone.

Turner combines a love of all the arts in his practice: poetry, music, philosophy - he has a renaissance man's mastery and worldview. Turner draws inspiration from the stars, the galaxies, ancient histories, myth and philosophy, from the minerals deep in the earth and geological formations and the tangata whenua in this place of ours, Aotearoa.