Gut Feelings
Installation view of Nicola Turner: Fabric of Undoing, 2025. Wool horsehair, coir, net, metal and rubbersite-response installation. Image courtesy of the artist and CARVALHO PARK, New York. Photo: Se Yoon Park.
“I call horsehair ‘dead matter’ in inverted commas, because I think it’s still alive in a sense,” says British artist Nicola Turner on the choice of materials central to her work. Her fiber-based sculptures are mainly made of wool and horsehair, salvaged from old mattresses or other upholstered furniture. At CARVALHO PARK, Turner occupies one room with larger-than-life sculptures that float, climb up, and extend into the architecture (Fabric of Undoing), while also responding to Yulia Iosilzon’s paintings in The Threshold Beckons with smaller pieces of the same material. “We might perceive [wool and horsehair] that once grew on the animal’s body as dead once cut off, but it carries on the process of slowly decaying or changing, or it morphs in color. I’m sure there’s still energy and life within it.” Indeed, these dark, coiled, indescribable masses of fiber seem to emanate a sense of warmth and presence that deeply anchors the viewer in the conditions of their existence. Emotive and liminal, Turner’s work resists easy associations with formal likeness or thematic specificities.
Xuezhu Jenny Wang: When and how did you start working with horsehair and wool? What draws you to this material?
NT: During my MA, I was exploring different materials, particularly organic ones—materials that weren’t heavily processed or filled with chemicals. At one point, I experimented with cow dung, looking into traditional methods of using it for building, mixing it with mud, straw, and lime. But the material was heavy and took too long to dry.
Then I came across a discarded chair with horsehair bursting out of it. I took it into the studio, started dissecting it, and discovered this incredible material inside. It was familiar to me—my mother worked as an upholsterer, so I had seen horsehair before. I loved its associations. Not only was it light and easy to manipulate, but it also required stitching, a skill passed down from my mother and grandmother. It allowed me to create in a way that felt deeply personal and rooted in my upbringing. There was also something visceral about it—the material felt like the bowels of the chair spilling out, its "guts" exposed.
When you unpick old furniture, you often find traces of its past—small objects dropped into the cracks, remnants of lives lived around it. The idea that materials absorb stories fascinated me. People sit on chairs, share secrets, and perhaps some of that energy lingers.
Initially, I focused on horsehair, but sourcing secondhand horsehair in large quantities was difficult. Then, someone wrote to me, saying she suffered from PTSD and found my work strangely comforting because it put into visual images what they found hard to express in words. She also mentioned how it reminded her of the comfort of wool. That made me think—wool, like horsehair, is a natural fiber, though its texture is different. In the UK, where I have my studio, wool is not very valuable at the moment, which makes it easier to acquire in large amounts.
A shepherd saw my work in a gallery and has been incredibly supportive. She rings me after each shearing, asking if I need more wool. That connection has been amazing.
Portrait of Nicola Turner. Image courtesy of the artist and CARVALHO PARK, New York. Photo: Se Yoon Park.
XJW: How do you source the furniture pieces from which you extract horsehair?
NT: I’ve been collecting horsehair mattresses from Freecycle, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. Occasionally, I’ll pick one up only to find it’s coconut fiber instead of horsehair, which can be disappointing. I drove to France recently because someone told me they had 20 horsehair mattresses—but when I got there, most were just wool.
One of my finds through Freecycle was a double horsehair mattress, and I hired a courier company to collect it from a castle in Scotland. The owner was surprised I’d go to such lengths, but when it arrived, they shared its history—it came from a bed that apparently had been slept on by James the Pretender when he came to try and claim the English throne.
Many of the pieces I collect come with stories. People will say, “That’s the mattress my grandmother slept on,” or “My grandfather died on it.” Quite a few horsehair mattresses are very old, so they've also been passed down for generations.
XJW: Do you factor the provenance of these materials into your art-making process?
NT: I don’t always document the provenance of every material—I sometimes wonder if I should. For instance, my French sister-in-law gave me an old mattress and told me that a priest had slept on it.
However, I prefer to work intuitively rather than overthink the significance of each material. If I focused too much on the origins—like trying to shape a piece to reflect its past owner—it might hinder the creative process. Instead, I let the materials guide me and reflect afterward on how their histories emerge in the final form.
XJW: What kind of responses, emotional or visceral, do you hope to elicit from viewers?
NT: I don’t like prescribing specific interpretations. I find it fascinating how people respond differently to my work. I try to work from a place of intuition and truth.
Recently, someone told me they felt my work had an openness to it, allowing for varied responses. When I showed my work at an old house in the UK, I asked the volunteers not to explain my work to visitors but instead to ask them, "What do you think it’s about?" Each person brings their own story to the work. I love it when people take the time to engage with it and question what feelings it brings out, rather than immediately assigning it a familiar shape, like saying, “Oh, it looks like an elephant.”
Installation view of Nicola Turner: Fabric of Undoing, 2025. Wool horsehair, coir, net, metal and rubbersite-response installation. Image courtesy of the artist and CARVALHO PARK, New York. Photo: Se Yoon Park.
XJW: What other responses from viewers have stood out to you?
NT: Interestingly, I’ve had several different people write to me about finding comfort in my work after experiencing trauma. That’s surprising because it’s not something I consciously aim for.
On the other hand, some people struggle with my work. In certain settings, it can be controversial. For example, in a historic country house in the UK, some visitors were upset that contemporary art had been introduced into such a traditional space. But despite the controversy, visitor numbers increased by twenty percent, which the venue saw as a positive outcome.
XJW: You mentioned not wanting to impose a specific interpretation, so how do you develop the forms of your work?
NT: For my large-scale installations, I like to respond to the space. I often arrive with my tendrils and let them “feel” their way into the environment. I always leave room for improvisation during installation—it allows the work to respond to the site dynamically.
For example, at CARVALHO PARK, I hadn’t visited the gallery before installing my work, but they sent me videos and photos. I was inspired by recent time spent in a hospital with my father, noticing the constant movement of trolley wheels. That led me to incorporate hospital trolley elements into the installation. Once in the space, I interacted with the ceiling’s pipework and adjusted as I went.
XJW: You also have smaller works in the next room. How do you approach scale, and what changes when your work becomes smaller?
NT: I started making smaller works in 2023. Instead of responding to architectural space, I began responding to objects and processing the material a bit more. I really love making these smaller works—they have a different energy.
When working with Jennifer to decide which pieces to bring to the gallery, she was drawn to the ones that almost felt like they were on little feet, as if they could walk together. When displayed, we noticed they looked much better when placed directly on the floor. It gave them a sense of freedom—like they could scuttle off at night. When grouped together, they evoke unexpected associations, like family, with a larger piece appearing to protect a smaller one.
Installation view of The Threshold Beckons, featuring the work of Yulia Iosilzon and Nicola Turner. Courtesy of the artists and CARVALHO PARK, New York.
XJW: You mentioned responding to space and architecture. Is there a particular setting in which you’d prefer to exhibit your work? What’s a dream place to display your work?
NT: Many of my past projects have involved historical sites, which sometimes come with conservation concerns. But I enjoy the contrast between different settings—whether an industrial space, a country house, outside in trees, or against old stonework. CARVALHO PARK is actually my first solo exhibition in a white-cube space. Though different from my previous venues, the gallery has a unique character, with polished concrete floors and old wooden beams—layers of history that still resonate in the space.
As for completely white-cube spaces, I find that very few are truly devoid of history. Even in New York, many galleries retain architectural elements from their past lives—whether old ceilings, pipes, or floor textures. There’s always something to respond to.
If I could choose an ideal location for my work, I’ve always admired the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, the KINDL in Berlin, the off-site exhibition sites at the Venice Biennale. There are so many amazing spaces.
XJW: Where does the title of the exhibition come from?
NT: It’s from a quote by Donna Haraway in Staying with the Trouble:
“Grief is a path to understanding entangled shared living and dying; human beings must grieve with, because we are in and of this fabric of undoing. Without sustained remembrance, we cannot learn to live with ghosts and so cannot think.”
I love this quote because it speaks to the entangled nature of life, death, and matter. We often hold onto objects because they connect us to the past—whether it’s a piece of furniture from a deceased relative or a textile worn by someone long gone. Our relationship with materials is deeply entwined with memory and history.
Nicola Turner: Fabric of Undoing is on view at CARVALHO PARK from January 25th to March 15th, 2025. The exhibition will be accompanied by Ephemeral solace (in passing), a new choreographic work by Taylor Stanley and Alec Knight on March 4th, 8th, and 15th, 2025.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
