‘Life is short, art long,” says Ken Turner, reading from a book of aphorisms by ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. And he’s half right, really, because at 100 years old – and very possibly the world’s oldest performance artist – art might have been long, but life hasn’t been all that short for him, either. And he has filled those years to the brim with radicalism, experimentalism and a singular dedication to pushing ideas as far as he can make them go.
In the 1960s, Turner moved from painting towards a socially conscious form of public art, creating giant inflatable sculptures that visitors could inhabit and interact with decades before immersive art became a thing. He was taught by Fernand Léger, he was mates with John Berger, he made frames for Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Last year, he drove a tank over a Tesla in a performance meant as a damning indictment of corporate greed and rising fascism. His has been a life of rebellion and revolution, of obstinately following his own artistic path no matter what obstacles he encounters, no matter how much easier it would have been to walk down a more well-trodden one.
