So a week or so ago I watched a super talk, via the ubiquitous Zoom, arranged by the Friends of Museum and Art Swindon* The speaker was a sculptor by the name of Joseph Ingleby. His name might not mean anything to you but a piece of his work will. For Joseph is the creator of the Turtle Storm sculpture that resides in Queen’s Park.
Linda Kasmaty has, on her blog site, a post entitled From Seed to Steel, that focuses on Joseph and more of his work.
This post though focuses on Turtle Storm – the sculpture.
About the Turtle Storm Sculpture
Joe created Turtle Storm back in the 1980s for his degree show. Indeed, June 1986 saw Turtle Storm exhibited for the first time in Farnham. The sculpture is a response to the effects on a turtle colony from nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1980s. It’s composed of irregular natural forms including turtle shells, making an abstract work.
Below are two of Joes’s sketches of the sculpture that he drew in November 1985.
The sculpture has an interesting back story. Here it is in bullets:
- 1986-88 – After Joe’s degree show the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, exhibited Turtle Storm outside the entrance to the college.
- 1988 – 89 – The sculpture enjoyed a tenure outside Waverley Borough Council in Godalming, Surrey
- 1989 – 94 – A.R Dufty, the former head of the Armouries at the Tower of London bought the piece, in his capacity as curator at Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. So for five years, Turtle Storm lived in the grounds of the home of William Morris. NB: NOT the Swindon Advertiser William Morris. That’s a common misconception.
- 1994 – Upon A.R. Dufty’s death, the curatorship of Kelmscott Manor passed to the William Morris Trust in Walthamstow. They decided not to exhibit anything there made outside of Morris’s lifetime (1834-96). As a result the Dufty family gave the sculpture to then Thamesdown Council in Swindon. They stored it while a new base of the council’s design was built for it in Queen’s Park.
- 1995 – present – The sculpture is sited in Queen’s Park in September 1995 with some collaboration and guidance from the artist.
The mayor of the time unveiled the work in a small ceremony. There was a small plaque installed at the time but that disappeared. But, in 2021 South Swindon Parish Council installed a new plaque. Joseph visited and some of the Friends of Museum and Art Swindon attended the unveiling.
To find out more about Joseph Ingleby and to see more of his work visit his website here.
And if you’re on Insta find him there here: https://www.instagram.com/joe_ingleby_sculpture/
Friends of Museum and Art Swindon
*If you’ve any interest at all – even one as passing as mine ( I don’t profess to be ‘heavily’ into art) then the Friends of Museum and Art Swindon are worth joining. Since the onset of the pandemic they’ve been offering talks via Zoom. These are free but they welcome donations. There’s a link in the top paragraph to their website.
And see our super page on the We Are Swindon website here.
See also this post about the gorilla in Queen’s Park:
