12 Years of Turf: In-conversation with Amy J Wilson & Meitao Qu

We’re inviting Turf alumni artists back to reflect on and discuss their careers since their involvement with Turf.
About this Event

What support do artists need to develop a creative career? Following on from our 2025/26 LEGACY year, we’re inviting Turf alumni artists back to reflect on and discuss their careers since their involvement with Turf.

Meitao Qu and Amy J Wilson started collaborating after being paired on The Exchange programme in collaboration with Turf, The NewBridge Project and Eastside Projects during the Covid-19 pandemic. Join Turf CoDirector Rosie Crane Eckmire for an informal discussion with them about how this collaboration led to their current Turf show and the importance of artist-led spaces for artist development.

ABOUT AMY J WILSON & MEITAO QU

Amy J Wilson works across printmaking, ceramics and digital media. She uses these mediums to create components which are combined into sculptural configurations. Her work is informed by histories of representation, from the artificiality of tools like Alberti’s window to the dominance of Euclidean geometry in contemporary game engines. Windows, portals, screens and membranes are recurrent motifs throughout her practice. Wilson uses methods of representation as a lens to explore object, animal and environmental agency.

Amy J Wilson studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (MFA 2017-19), where she was awarded the Felix Slade Scholarship. She is currently a studio member at Turf Projects in Croydon. Recent exhibitions include group shows at the ICA, London (2024); Erratum Gallery, Berlin (2024); OHSH Projects, London (2025); Seager, London (2025); and Lewisham Arthouse, London (2026). In 2025 she was selected for A-N’s Artist Bursary and was artist-in-residence at Atelier La Juntana, Santander, Spain.

Meitao Qu is a UK-based Chinese artist working across sculpture, installation and digital media. She is interested in the semantic surplus of models and miniatures, as surrogates of existing and imagined structures, which generate speculative narratives about the world at large that expand our normative fields of view. Taking urban landscapes, industrial infrastructure and domestic interiors as sites of inquiry, her practice explores how popular imaginations and dominant ideologies are inscribed through the material and architecture of everyday life.

Meitao holds an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, funded by the Oxford-Kaifeng Graduate Scholarship, and an MA from the Courtauld Institute. She is currently an East Gallery Fellow at Norwich University of the Arts and a recipient of the Gilbert Bayes Award, Royal Society of Sculptors. Recent and upcoming projects include: Urban Phenomenology, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka (2024); It’s a small world (after all), Public Gallery, London (2024); Decadently Ordinary, Quench Gallery (2025), Immersed in Changing Landscapes, Norfolk & Norwich Festival (2025) and Interior Fictions, SET91, London (2026).

ABOUT TURF:

Turf Projects is Croydon’s homegrown, artist-led space, founded in 2013 by locals.

Grounded in themes of place and belonging, Turf creates space and opportunities that nurture emerging and under-represented creative practices. Our work aims to help people to encounter and make art together that helps shape the spaces and experiences around us.

We do this through free exhibitions, workshops, collaborative projects, affordable artist studios, making facilities, resources and two artist collectives of young artists & learning disabled artists.

Deeply rooted in Croydon, Turf shows how cultural organisations rooted in communities can create change with national ambition, relevance and impact.

We’ve created more than 600 paid opportunities for artists since 2013.

turf-projects.com

@turfprojects

A request from the Turf team - if you book, please turn up!

Around 30% of people booking free tickets don't attend. As a charity, we aim to support people who need creative opportunities the most and our free tickets are limited and in high demand. Every person who doesn’t turn up means someone else can’t attend, so please let us know if you can’t make it to free up a space. If you don’t attend twice or more without letting us know, you may be restricted from booking again.

KEY ACCESS INFO:

To help us support you best, please let us know if you have any access needs when booking.

TURF CODE:

This is a shared space. Let’s work together to keep Turf welcoming to all. Be respectful and kind in how you speak and act.

• Make space for everyone to speak and join in.
• Listen to others.

Discrimination is not allowed here. Don’t treat others differently because of their:

• Race
• Gender identity
• Sexuality or relationships
• Age
• Disability
• Religion

Look after the space - we all share it.

• Take care of objects.
• Help keep things clean & tidy.
• Ask the Turf team for help if you need it.

Thank you!