Emma Turpin Residency

Artists

Emma Turpin

Emma Turpin’s practice investigates the material and environmental implications of polyester: a synthetic, oil-derived textile that dominates the fashion industry despite its deeply unsustainable origins. During her residency at KOPPEL Broadway in Wimbledon, Turpin continues her exploration of polyester’s materiality through a series of works that examine its physical and chemical composition — Polyethylene Terephthalate — and the petroleum-based processes behind its production.

Informed by the fabric’s density, durability, and its uncanny ability to retain scent, Turpin’s polyester ‘oil’ paintings aim to stimulate both visual and olfactory responses. Working across painting and sculpture, her practice operates at the intersection of sensory experience and ecological critique.

As part of her residency, Turpin will develop a new large-scale textile work using discarded satin, a polyester-adjacent material, experimenting with the sewing technique known as shirring, recently re-embraced by the fashion industry. By engaging with this trend, Turpin exposes the environmental cost behind mainstream aesthetics and questions the cycles of overproduction that define fast fashion. The sculptural form echoes the excesses of fabric waste while amplifying the entangled politics of style, labour, and sustainability.

Through her time at The Koppel Project, Turpin seeks to open up a space for dialogue around the urgent changes required in fashion production, offering a fine art framework for interrogating the systems that shape how we wear, discard and consume.