Artist Voices: In Conversation with Josie Turnbull and Khairani Barokka

Join Josie Turnbull and artist & writer Khairani Barokka as they explore the ideas behind Josie’s exhibition at God’s House Tower, Our Coffers Were Emptied to Pay for Your Pleasures and discuss art-making, fish, fiction and fables.

About Artist Voices:

Artist voices is a series of discussions and conversations that aim to support artist development by unpacking and demystifying key topics and issues of the visual arts ecology through discussion with artists and cultural workers.

Artist Voices will be hosted on Zoom. Details of how to join will be shared in the days leading up to the event via Eventbrite.

Please note: this talk will be recorded and uploaded to the ‘a space’ Youtube Channel after the event.

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).

About Khairani Barokka:

Khairani Barokka is a writer and artist from Jakarta, based in London. Her work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, environmental justice, and access as translation. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, Emerging Writers Festival’s Inaugural Writer-in-Residence, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, an Artforum Must-See, and the first non-British Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. She was the first Poet-in-Residence at Modern Poetry in Translation, later co-edited their Body Issue, and became the magazine’s first non-British Editor until 2023. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Award. She is the author of five books, most recently Barbellion Prize-shortlisted Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), Jhalak Prize-longlisted amuk (Nine Arches), and her new prose debut Annah, Infinite (Tilted Axis), based on a multi-year art and writing project of the same name.