JIMMY TURRELL – Biography
Jimmy Turrell was born in Newcastle, he studied at St Martin’s and has been represented by Heart since 2005.
Jimmy’s work is a multimedia cross pollination of reference points. He collects a huge amount of ephemera with which to create collages, buying second hand books by the pallet load, to cut up and repurpose. On top of these he creates textures, adds colour and builds his picture, either physically or on the computer or a mixture of the two. Jimmy can both paint with an incredible amount of realism in watercolour, as well as simply operate a risograph machine. He takes his own photos, sometimes hiring models to create the exact images he needs for a commission. Whatever commercial project he’s working on it will always be born out of experiment and play rather than repetition. He’s happy dipping objects in paint and photographing them, or physically flypostering layers of paper to get a particular effect and show through. Jimmy constantly creates a huge amount of original source material that if not instantly found a use for, can be put aside and revisited when best suited.
While Jimmy is working, music will be playing, setting the pace to a passionate absorption in his work. Jimmy’s evident love, appreciation and eclectic knowledge of music has encouraged many clients in the music industry to commission his work. He has created album artwork for Capitol Records, Universal Music and SONY Records in addition to a diverse range of independent labels. During one of his projects for SONY he worked closely with the Producer Paul Epworth and went on to be commissioned by him to create artwork for Church Studios. Most recently Jimmy has worked on tour merchandise and stage visuals for Beck and has created a lyric video for his single ‘WOW’.
Jimmy’s resonating aesthetic sits as easily on the pages of NME and Playboy as it does the covers of Newsweek or Harper’s Magazine. Jimmy’s open approach to getting inside a subject and exploring it visually has developed a reputation for intelligent work that artfully strikes salient messages. Transcending and avoiding classification has allowed Jimmy to work for a variety of brands in the music, fashion, film and sports industries who seek to appeal to an open and alternative audience.
As part of an advertising campaign for Fiat, he’s had his studio walls photographed. Jimmy’s created modern film style billboards for La Boheme and Don Giovani for the English National Opera, as well as TV, online and print campaigns for the IAAF. Jimmy immerses himself in a creative practice that he is very much the unique author of.
Select Client List
Absolut, Apple, BBC Radio 1, Beck, Biotop, British Film Institute, Capitol Records, Billboard, Ebony, ESPN, Deutsche Bank, English National Opera, Fiat, Fontsmith, Glastonbury Festival, Getty, GQ, The Guardian, International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), Kyocera, Levi’s, Madame Figaro, The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Nike, Penguin Books, Playboy, RCA Records, Rolling Stone, SONY Music, The Southbank Centre, Teenage Cancer Trust, UK Music Video Awards, Universal Music, Vanity Fair, Wallpaper*, Wired,