Turmach 4 No. 2

The arrangement of the black lines cut into the white hexagonal units of this shallow relief suggest an underlying order or sequence. Subtle changes to this configuration occur as the viewer moves around the work and the black edges of the units come in and out of view, creating new lines.

The title of the work, Turmach, is an abbreviation of Turing Machine, an idealised computing device originally developed by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Anthony Hill made a series of works with this title in the early 1980s, which he described as an attempt to ‘root the theme in a context of generative algorithmic procedures and so challenge the viewer with the idea that the work was produced not by a human but by a Turing Machine’. [1]

Hill had been using mathematical structures as a starting point for composing non-figurative art works since the late 1950s. He described the process as putting abstract mathematical notions ‘to work’, by combining measured modulations with his own artistic decisions. [2] In Turmach 4 No. 2 Hill revisits the use of 120 degree angle units linked into hexagons, which occurs in earlier works. [3]

Lisa Newby, March 2021

[1] Alastair Grieve, ‘The development of Anthony Hill’s work from 1950 to the present’ in Anthony Hill, A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat. (London: Hayward Gallery, 1983), p.57.

[2] Anthony Hill, ‘A View of Non-Figurative Art and Mathematics and an Analysis of a Structural Relief’, Leonardo, Volume 10, No.1 (Winter, 1977), pp.7-12, p.12.

[3] See 31578 and 31600 in the Sainsbury Centre Collection.