Turner Contemporary

Enter a world of wonder, fascination and inquiry. Experience the spectacular and the bizarre, the startling and mysterious, contemporary art alongside historical artefacts, as the gallery becomes a cabinet of curiosities.

See the absurdly over stuffed Horniman Museum walrus, which has travelled to the seaside having left its current home for the first time since the 1890s, sit proudly in our North gallery. Works by contemporary artists including Katie Paterson, Pablo Bronstein, Tacita Dean and Gerard Byrne expose past and present fascinations such as astronomy, animals, maps and humankind’s obsession with collecting, blurring the boundaries of art, science and fantasy.

Historical artefacts abound with intricate pen and ink studies by Leonardo da Vinci; Albrecht Dürer’s celebrated Rhinoceros woodcut (1515); beautiful bird studies by the gallery’s namesake JMW Turner; late 19th century models of aquatic creatures by German glassmakers Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka; the mineral collection of Roger Caillois from the Natural History Museum in Paris, the diarist and botanist John Evelyn’s cabinet, ivory anatomical models from the 17th and 18th centuries, Robert Hooke’s Micrographia with its startingly detailed illustration of a flea, and a penguin collected from one of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions from our neighbour the Powell-Cotton Museum in Birchington-on-Sea.

A Hayward Touring exhibition, in collaboration with Turner Contemporary and curated by Brian Dillon. Also in association with New York art and culture magazine Cabinet.

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

FREE

Website

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/curiosity-art-and-the-pleasures-of-knowing

The exhibition offers a unique exploration of how the art of oil sketching in the landscape, rather than in the studio, became fashionable in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Free.

Website

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions

Celebrate Adult Learners’ Week (18 – 24 May) with a sculpture drawing class – draw Juan Muñoz’s figures and get tips from artist Roy Eastland.

Suitable for

• Not suitable for children

When

2-4pm

Admission

Free

Website

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/media/documents/Whatson_FINAL_web.pdf

Enjoy the opening days of our summer exhibition with our celebratory events:
Sat 26 May 2013
Have your fortune told by the supernaturally skilled dog Mystic Sid (11am, free); be taken on a personal tour of the exhibition by children who talk about their favourite object in the Curiosity exhibition (11am, free); create your own Rorschach print at our workshop (1 - 4pm, free); watch exhibiting artist Aura Satz’s mesmerising Stroboscopic revelations in a drone performance (5pm, free).

Sun 26 May 2013
Make your own fossil impressions into clay
(1 - 4pm, £3 per child / free for adults, under 3s and families living in CT9).

Suitable for

• Any age

When

10am-6pm

Sun 26 May - Sat 1 Jun
Become a palaeontologist for the week. Make fossil impressions in clay (Sun 26,
Mon 27, Tue 28 May 1 – 4pm); create your own unusual skeleton or fossil to take home (Wed 29 & Thu 30 May 1 – 4pm).
£3 per child / free for adults, under 3s and CT9 postcode residents

At our Fossil Fair on Saturday 1 June, have your fossil identified by experts including Dr Alastair Bruce and the Rock Doc team (1 – 4pm, £3 / free for children and CT9 residents), and make Big Foot prints on our terrace with artist Stephen Fowler (1 – 4pm, free).

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Some events are charged, please see details.

Website

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/whats-on/category/families

Our unique coastal location is the inspiration for a new display of three works from the Arts Council Collection. From 27 November 2012 to 2 June 2013 you can see paintings from the mid part of the twentieth century by Jeffery Camp RA (b1923), Ivon Hitchins (1893-1975) and Thelma Hulbert (1913-1995).

Jeffery Camp’s panoramic Blue Sea (1959) depicts the waters off the East Anglian coast where he lived from the mid-1940s. One of Camp’s ongoing preoccupations was the horizon line, where land meets sky. Landscape and still life were the principal subjects of Ivon Hitchens and Thelma Hulbert, both painters experimenting with abstraction to different degrees. Rocks Under Water (1962-65) is likely to have been painted on the Cornish coast, where Hulbert spent time, while Hitchens’ Garden Cove (1948-50) is evocative of the light and colour of the English countryside – a recurring theme in his work.

This new display is part of Turner Contemporary’s ongoing programme of temporary exhibitions that connect historical and contemporary art. The display can be seen alongside exhibitions by contemporary artists Alex Katz and Maria Nepomuceno, and in February 2013, alongside Carl Andre and Rosa Barba.

‘The Arts Council has a fantastic collection and we are delighted to be able to work with them to bring this group of paintings to Turner Contemporary this autumn. We hope audiences will enjoy the different approaches to land and seascape in the work of these twentieth century British painters.’
Victoria Pomery, Director

Suitable for

• Any age

Website

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/arts-council-collection-display

Love Architecture Week
Fri 21 - Sun 30 June
Celebrate the Royal Institute of Architects (RIBA) festival.

David Chipperfield Architect Matt Ball gives an architectural talk about our Curiosity exhibition (Tue 25 Jun 6pm, £6 / £5), there’s an evening of architectural inspired performance and film featuring artist group Obsolete Studios and Bromstone Primary school with Adesola Dancing Strong Dance Company at Late Night Love Architecture (Fri 28 Jun, 6pm, free).

Then show off your sandcastle making skills at the RIBA Sandcastle Challenge on Margate beach (Sat 29 Jun, 10am–3.30pm, free. (Email emma.hardy@riba.org to register) and see an architectural model exhibition by Betteridge & Milsom (Thu 27 - Sun 30 Jun, free).

Suitable for

• Any age

Admission

Talk £6 / £5 concessions
Register for RIBA Sandcastle Challenge at emma.hardy@riba.org