George Turner – New Zealand artist and musician. RitualOS is the interactive portfolio of George Turner, featuring artworks, exhibitions, films, music, and freelance work exploring queer ecology and Aotearoa's landscapes.

George Turner (Pākehā) is a transdisciplinary artist and musician based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Working across sculpture, installation, moving image, projection, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and simulation. Their practice treats ecology not as scenery but as a system of memory – one that leaks through matter, bodies, images, and structures, carrying the disregarded residue of landscapes and the trauma embedded within them. Guided by posthuman and postcolonial thought, queer ecology, and the material intelligence of more-than-human life, Turner is drawn to nonhuman forces that expose the instability of the systems humans depend on.

Working with materials such as beeswax, gorse, fungi, fire, water, and domestic objects, Turner stages encounters between symbolic order and material failure: flags burn, soap wounds, furniture becomes host, flowers bend under unseen pressure, devotional forms are remade as contaminated objects. In Out of the Scene, Into the Fever (2025), 256 hand-cast beeswax mushrooms reconstructed the New Zealand flag at floor level; forty-eight, fitted with wicks, were lit so the national symbol briefly reassembled – unstable, flickering, composed entirely of fire – before extinguishing itself over seventy minutes. The work offers no redemption. It asks what remains when the performance of innocence is exhausted, and what might begin when inherited structures decompose.

Since 2017, Turner has exhibited extensively across Aotearoa and internationally, including Under the Pasture (Enjoy Contemporary art space, Wellington), Unsettling (Te Whare Toi City Gallery Wellington), The Ground Will Not Hold (Bowen Galleries, Wellington), and Stages of Grief (Pada Studios, Portugal). They were a finalist in the 2024 Molly Morpeth Canaday Awards. Alongside their own practice, Turner has assisted acclaimed artist Lisa Reihana on major projects including Ihi (Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art, 2021) and The Battle (Aotearoa Festival of Arts).

Turner holds a BFA (First Class Honours) from Toi Rauwhārangi Massey University, and has undertaken residencies and fellowships including the Trans-Tasman Digital Artist Fellowship – a first-of-its-kind program co-organised by the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative New Zealand – the Pada Residency in Portugal, and the Commode Residency.

As a freelance designer and visual artist, Turner has produced music videos and visual campaigns for musicians including Benee, Heavy Chest, and Lola, including visuals for Benee’s 2023 Coachella performance and her subsequent international tour. With over a decade of experience, Turner’s design and moving-image work spans hip hop, pop, electronica, and experimental rock.

Also an accomplished musician, Turner has released two EPs, Some Days and Thank You For Your Time, and the full-length debut album Insect (2019), followed by tours across Aotearoa and Australia. A sophomore album is forthcoming.