Martin Thompson, a Friend of Kettle’s Yard, tells us about the Friends’ trip to the Lim and Turnbull Studio in January 2023.

On a damp day in late January, a group of the Friends were fortunate to be given a special tour of the Turnbull Studio in East London. The Studio is designed as a private space allowing invited visitors a chance to engage closely with works by two of this country’s most significant modern sculptors who happened to have been married to one other.

It is entirely thanks to the dedication of the two sons of William (‘Bill’) Turnbull (1922-2012) and Kim Lim (1936-1997) that their parents’ artistic legacies have been imaginatively preserved and allowed to flourish in this way. We were warmly welcomed to the Studio by Alex and Johnny Turnbull who, in parallel with their own careers in music and film, have transformed part of an old Victorian factory into a showcase for a superb selection of their parents’ three dimensional works in bronze, metal, wood and stone, as well as paintings and prints. There is also an extensive research archive.

The two sons, together with the Studio’s strategic adviser, Bianca Chu, gave us a fascinating overview of the different stages in the development of Bill and Kim’s varied artistic careers. We learnt how having been an RAF pilot, Bill was determined to become an artist post-war. However, he soon rejected the conventional fine art teaching he received at the Slade to go his own way as a sculptor. Described by Antony Gormley as ‘a radical modernist’, much of his earlier work was greatly influenced by the ethnic art and artefacts he observed in the British Museum, including ancient Cycladic figurines.

Kim, who was born in Singapore, came to this country in the 1950s to study at St Martin’s and the Slade. Alex Turnbull explained how, in contrast to Bill’s work, her graceful sculptures, together with her spare minimalist prints, have only comparatively recently begun to receive the full international recognition they deserve. This, as he explained, was one of their main motivations in setting up the Studio, as a way of introducing a wider public to Kim’s work, and also to lesser appreciated aspects of Bill’s output, including his large-scale abstract paintings. These were influenced by his airborne experiences and his contact with major New York abstract artists, including Barnett Newman.

Although the couple, who married in 1960, worked in neighbouring studios, their influences and approaches were very different. Yet both bodies of work seem to share a reflective, meditative quality that becomes apparent when viewing their work in tandem. It was sheer delight to be able to spend unhurried time exploring the rich patinas that are a feature of Bills’s bronze heads and totemic forms and to absorb Kim’s elegant works in wood, metal and stone, invoking natural elements such as wind and light.

Excerpts from films about the two artists can be found here.

Such rare chances to visit private collections and artists’ studios not generally accessible to the public are a key feature of the Friends’ lively events programme. Full details of our future events can be found on the Friends Events page.