Snorkel, the celebrated Plymothian Loggerhead turtle, features in a new large-scale cinematic installation by artist John Russell. Washed ashore near Land’s End in 1990 the rare marine reptile cannot be released back into the wild due to poor eyesight and buoyancy problems. In the digital film and aquatic soundscape sited at KARST, the reanimated turtle moves through a distorted underworld of colliding psychedelic imagery and text. Rotating through the circulations of history and capital, Snorkel moves like an angel across the interval of material and the divine. As both. An oscillation between revolution and banality – always potentially revolutionary as well as potentially trivial.
Russell is perhaps best known for producing large-scale digital prints using 3D computer modelling, which often depict a lurid virtual-reality, spiked with grotesque humour. ‘The Good Shepherd’ will also include floor-to-ceiling backlit imagery and printed text-based work by the artist.