Artist-Led Tour: The Fabled Fortunes of a Fish with Josie Turnbull
Event, Free, In Person, Talks
Sunday 5th October 2025 2:30pm - 4:00pm
God's House Tower, Town Quay Road, Southampton, SO14 2NY
A special celebration to mark the end of the exhibition, featuring a tour led by the artist providing insight into her creative process followed by an informal Q&A session with both Josie and ‘a space’ arts curator & programme manager, Mia Delve.
About the exhibition: Through the ‘factual fable’ of the critically endangered Asian Arowana (once prized as a luxury status symbol). Josie Turnbull explores cycles of desirability, extraction and obsolescence. Costumes, trophies and bespoke artefacts trace the imagined rise‑and‑fall of a former champion fish, revealing the strange economics of artificial scarcity and cosmetic “grooming” in the global Arowana trade.
About Josie Turnbull: Josie is a multi-disciplinary artist and young people’s artist educator currently based in London. She completed an MA in Fine Art and Science at Central Saint Martins in 2022, following a number of years living in Ho Chi Minh City. Recent public presentations include a sculpture and short film commission as part of a cross disciplinary collective within the AHRC funded ‘Rethinking Fables’ project (2025), a commission by Shape Arts for ‘Open All Hours’, 198 Gallery, London (2023) ‘Open All Hours’, 198 Gallery, London (2023) and ‘Saline Shock!’ (solo), Orleans House Gallery London (2023). Also in 2023, she was awarded an Arts Council England DYCP grant to fund her international research on the Arowana fish, and was shortlisted for the UAL Sculpture/Clifford Chance Award. Selected residencies include the ‘Transcultural Collaboration – Shared Campus Semester’ in Zurich, Singapore and Yogyakarta (2022) UAL’s ‘Making Waves Scientist in Residence Program’ (2022), and was artist in residence at School360 Primary School (2021-2022).
In tandem with her personal studio practice, she has created moving image work for live music performances and music videos; for artists such as Rắn Cạp Đuôi, and Wesley Gonzalez.
Vist Josie’s website here: josie-rae-turnbull.format.com