Ken Turner, a 100-year-old artist believed to be the world's oldest performance artist, is the subject of a new exhibition at Wharfside Arts Hub in Penzance, prompting a wide-ranging conversation about his eight-decade career. Trained under Fernand Léger and connected to figures such as John Berger, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, Turner shifted in the 1960s from painting towards socially conscious public art, including giant inflatable sculptures that let visitors interact with them long before immersive art became fashionable. His career has been defined by a consistent refusal to conform to art-world conventions, most recently expressed last year when he drove a tank over a Tesla as a protest against corporate greed and rising fascism.

The exhibition, timed to his centenary, features new work alongside a filmic portrait made by his son, the film-maker Huw Wahl, who describes his father's painting as becoming increasingly playful with age. Turner, drafted into the mines and then the Royal Engineers during the second world war, emerged from service determined to make art but wary of formal art institutions, turning down a place at the Slade School of Fine Art and refusing to sit his final exam at Regent Street Polytechnic rather than conform to expected styles. He has written two books, Crashing Culture and A Life Being Ken Turner, and continues to paint and perform, insisting on play and imagination as central to both art and education.