Frances Turner The Future The Frances Turner Trust An open letter from Gordon Turner, Heather Gardiner and Peter Gandy, the family of Frances Turner. For a long time after Frances' sudden and untimely death our grief made it impossible to even think about the need to begin organising and cataloguing her work. Finally we have begun the task. It has turned out to be a great joy, as well as a valuable part of the healing of our pain. Frances has left a wonderful legacy of her life, a treasure-trove of extraordinary work. It has been an intense and poignant pleasure to see it again as it emerges from slide-boxes, photographs and catalogues. Frances' work is simply too good, and too important, to be allowed to disappear from public view. She was selected for exhibition at the UK National Portrait Gallery BP Award Exhibition five times between 1996-2001. The Portrait Award receives over six hundred entries annually from the best figurative artists in Britain, but only sixty paintings are exhibited. To be selected five times in six years justifies regarding Frances Turner as one of the most important British figurative artists of the late twentieth century. That is why we are committed to promoting her work. She is not here to fight for the recognition she deserves and so we must. On this page we have posted future events followed by the goals of the Frances Turner Trust. 
In April 2006 there is an Exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center. Artists in the show are either those with physical impairments, or those who worked with models with impairments. The center has selected Outside Life #4 by Frances Turner to be in this show. We will post more information here as it becomes available. Our primary goal is to produce a complete catalogue of Frances' work The Complete Works of Frances Turner' to be made available to Art schools and college libraries around the world. But we need your help to track down the work. Our next gaol is to stage a Retrospective of Frances' work which we had hoped would open in the UK in Spring 2006. Unfortunately, this has proved to be a lot more work than we naievely imagined and has been postponed. We will post new information here as it becomes available. We would also like to establish an award in the name of Frances for young artists specialising in figurative work in oil. If you think you can help us in any way to realise any of these goals please let us know. |