Guns carved into Wooden Desks

Updated at: 0857 PST, Wednesday, June 30, 2010 LONDON: Ben Turnbull, a controversial artist from London, creates unusual works of art by carving the shapes of toy weapons into wooden school desks. The artist, a passionate critic of the American political system, explains why he uses toys in his work: “Force fed on violence, abused by a controlling superpower and blackmailed through patriotism, the public are ultimately as disposable as the toys they once played with”. Ben Turnbull is fascinated by the global dominance of American culture, and his works unsettling effects result from re-presenting the toys of our innocent youth in symbolic forms that reveal the shocking truths about war, death and guns in the world’s most powerful country. Above all they take a satirical look at the lengths that the country’s political elites go to in order to control and manipulate the way we think, from our first days of play to the last time we cast our vote. Turnbull is a passionate critic of the contemporary American political system, and explains why toys are central to his work: ‘Force fed on violence, abused by a controlling superpower and blackmailed through patriotism, the public are ultimately as disposable as the toys they once played with’. Ben Turnbull was born in 1974. He lives and works in London.