Whatiftheworld / gallery

Solo Exhibition

20 April - 28 May 2011 (Exhibition extended until 18 June)

Opening Wednesday 20 April 18h00 - 20h00

Whatiftheworld is pleased to present a new solo presentation by acclaimed young painter Michael Taylor.

Michael Taylor’s new series of paintings, ‘The tenacious tree huggers’, portray a cast of awkward characters and their relationships to their personal environments. The paintings are character sketches of individuals struggling against the unpredictable ways of nature. These imagined people are not only confounded by the shifting occurrences within their environments, they are also troubled by their own individual natures. Through facial expressions and the powerful language of physical exaggeration, the portraits express misguided ideas around environmental ‘friendliness’, feelings of irresponsibility, indifference toward a changing world, and the concept of ageing.

The ironic exhibition title invites viewers to look at the body of work as a parody of our relationship with nature. Trying desperately to hold on to something that we feel part of, yet inherently misunderstand. The title’s derogatory reference is used as a satirical pun emphasising the ease with which we quip about stereotypes. The organic play, active in the exhibition title, is extended to the naming of the individual works. These titles invoke contradiction and humour as a means to interrogate notions around the human condition.

Taylor approaches the act of painting in the same way that he does drawing. From Taylor’s memory unfettered and informal manifestations, of imagined and illustrative thoughts and narratives, are rendered. Reference material is used merely to trigger visual associations that are then employed to create new realities and fictions. This unreserved and quick drawing process gives way to a conflation of strokes and marks that create a rich ground of pictorial sketching. In Taylor’s pictures colours and lines meet as incongruous forces struggling to form a rational connection. This relationship may be described as the process of colouring-in outside of the lines. Taylor brings together the visual languages of illustration and abstraction to confront people’s notions of representation, the process of interpreting pictures, and the understanding of visual narratives.

Click here for more info about Michael Taylor