cont…
Knitting. There’s something potently nostalgic about it, like an activity encountered in a time warp – a fact that seems strangely pertinent to Greer Taylor’s work. Indeed there are times when it seems that Taylor is knitting herself, and perhaps her viewer, out of this world… and perhaps into hers.
There is something eerily immersive about Taylor’s work. With its beguiling textures, almost ridiculous attention to detail and practically irradiated colouration these works are at times suggestive of some form of information transmission – beams of data suggestive of hidden messages and arcane knowledge.
Taylor’s work carries evidence of a marvelous mélange of influences and technical know-how. Alongside her sculpture Taylor is a writer of some flair (it is safe to say that much of what she writes – her self-absorption of landscape and experiential immersion within the natural environs during her travels – feeds into her work with grace). She has worked at designing ‘art garments’ and continues to abet her sculptural practice with a secondary career as a graphic designer.
These adjoining practices – her love of the outdoors and her adeptness in the digital realm – are not, I think, irrelevant or even contradictory. Her sculpture clearly refers both to nature and the digital realm – her ‘rays’ of colour hint at data transmission and holograms and/or spider webs and streaks of sunlight through foliage. It is interesting to consider, looking at Taylor’s work that Information Technology is most often referred to as the ‘Net’ or the ‘Web’ – methods of entrapment both manmade and found in the natural world.
Taylor has commented that; “most often I write while sitting on the earth – most usually on a rock – to feel the earth beneath me… and it seems here that I know more than I know…” This strange sense of being a conduit of some form may lie at the heart of Taylor’s practice.
In the work intrusion she deliberately inverts notions of interior and exterior, creating a communication portal between the artificial (interior) and the natural (exterior). From within the gallery (or, equally, sitting on a rock) one is simultaneously transported outside. Using mirrors and cones and colours she somewhat deviously creates a fiction of movement and spatial disruption.
In wired she creates communication devices that carry resemblance to amoebas full of kinetic energy. The creatures/devices are concocted from knitted copper using a hand-operated knitting machine in one case and knitting needles in the other. Using archaic technologies she creates talismans from the future.
Similarly, when she hasn’t found a suitable rock to use as thinking-post a tree-stump must stand in. With their complex stories in swirls and ruptures and webs of age and drought and fire such stumps are in their way maps of intricate information. But in Taylor’s inimitable way in endgrain she recreates the natural universe with aluminium, automotive paint and neoprene thread to create the artifice of a series of end-grain ‘shields,’ what she describes as “an interplay of exposure and protection.”
In Greer Taylor’s universe nature and artifice mingle, creating a multi-leveled dance of information and contemplation. A world of binary codes, zeroes and ones combining to create a far more complex equation.
Ashley Crawford 2013
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I would like to thank
- Andy Dinan, gallery director for her support of my practice and inviting me to do this solo exhibition, and procuring the support of SDA.
- Schulberg Demkiw Architects who supported this exhibition — a four page fold-out catalogue together with the essay by Ashley Crawford was produced with this support
- Ashley Crawford for his essay
- Claire, Amanda, Fi, Tabitha and Mitch for their assistance during preparation and install
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zero&one exhibition dates were 3—28 July 2013
