Janet Turra, a photographer and ceramicist, honed her photography skills as a tool in her fine arts career. Often in her work, she used photography to capture stylised still life images and moments she had created as a production potter. Over 25 years, she developed a more specific language through photography that reveals who we are in moments, specifically moments tied to mothering.
Turra homeschools her children without technology and documents them in the same south coast East Cork landscape of her childhood. Her images capture their humanness as they move freely outdoors rather than inhibited inside. Her ongoing work documents their childhood through a time soon to be lost, both to adulthood and a digital world. 1
Awards and honours
- 1999, Barry Maloney Memorial Prize For Art And Design, NCEA, Cork, Ireland
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
- 2020, Semi-Precious, Self-Curated, Ballyseedy Cafe, Cork, Ireland, 21st December to present
- 2019, Semi-Precious, Self-Curated, Ballymaloe House, Cork, Ireland, 4th to 25th September
Group exhibitions
- 2006, Visual Voices, Self-Curated, Pop-up Exhibition Space, Cork, Ireland, 18th August to 18th September
- 2006, Eigse Arts Festival, Cliodhna Shaffrey, Carlow College, Carlow, Ireland, 17th to 25th June
- 2004, Graduation Show, Vincent O’Shea, National Design and Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland, 5th to 19th July
- 1999, Teanga, Roisin Collins, CCAD, Cork, Ireland, 9th to 23rd July
Projects
- Shopping Lists (2021)
These shopping lists are like secret windows into the lives of people. I would have thought that across countries and people the lists would contain the same items – bread, butter, milk – but instead, I have been intrigued to see them include all manner of weird and wonderful things.
The more lists I have documented the more I realise that rather than satisfying our need for staple items, each list reveals an individual and a window into their daily lives. Collectively, these shopping lists come together in micro chapters as part of a larger and complex narrative of our mundane yet fascinating lives.
