Stephen Turner

Materia Prima

“And upon reaching a little valley, a very wild steep place…I beheld.. many kinds of colour; ochre, dark and light sinoper, blue and white; and this I held the greatest wonder in the world – that white could exist in a seam of earth”

Cennino Cennini, ‘Il libro dell’Arte’,  14th Century

Is all that glisters gold?  Through a process of walking, collecting, ‘experiment’ and scientific analysis, Stephen Turner has surveyed the colour of the Carnon Vallley from its source south of Blackwater, to the tidal estuary at Restronguet Creek some six miles to the south. Working in collaboration with the Camborne School of Mines, a qualitative evaluation of the visual world is contrasted with quantitative scans of a microscopic reality underlying outward appearance.

With thanks to Matthew Power, Business Fellow in Applied Mineralogy, for access to the QemSCAN facility at Camborne School for Mines; a fully automated Scanning Electron Microscope System for scanning particulate materials.

A RANE Research Project

Commissioned by Falmouth University, 2006 with support from the Cambourne School of Mines, University of Exeter.

Research in Art, Nature and the Environment (RANE) is a research cluster established in 2004 at what was then University College Falmouth (now Falmouth University). Led by Dr. Daro Montag, RANE explores the intersection of visual arts, ecological philosophy and environmental science, contributing to sustainability and engaging the public with environmental issues.

Conference

Stephen Turner was a speaker on ‘Materia Prima, Art Nature & the Environment’ Conference, University College Falmouth, July 2006.