Frances Turner
Artist 22 April 1965 - 17 July 2003 
At 7.10pm on the seventeenth of July 2003, aged only 38, Frances Turner died of a brain haemorrhage in the Atkinson Morley hospital in Wimbledon, London. There had been no warning or indication that anything was wrong. She died very suddenly, with barely five days between the first attack and her final moments. One day she was here, and then suddenly she was gone. She died as she lived - in a rush. And her death was like her art - shocking. Much of her work, like the pieces shown here, now seems prophetic in the light of her untimely death. Although Frances Turner the woman is no longer with us, Frances Turner the artist is still alive. Her work lives on. As she would have said herself. Many beautiful things have been written about Frances on the website of her gallery in New York - Art at Large. There you can read the guestbook and write your own thoughts about Frances and her work. 
In November 2003 an offrenda, an offering or altar, was set up for Frances in the Anglo-Mexican Foundation offices in Mexico. It was a visit to the exhibition 'The Skeleton at the Feast' in London in the 1980's that first allerted Frances to the extraordinary way this country celebrates 'Life in Death' during the 'Dia de los Muertos' or the Day of the Dead. In 2002 Frances spent the Dia de los Muertos at an all-night vigil in Mexico. Who could know that the following year an offrenda would be set up for her? These photographs are courtesy of Jutta Rutz who curated Frances' show Sordid Belleza at the Museo del Chopo in 2002. Please email us if you would like your thoughts about Frances or her work to be displayed here |