Front: In the long run, 2005 acrylic on board 60 x 120 cm
brian moore gallery 9 – 26 November 2005
With friends like these, 2005 acrylic on board 60 x 120 cm
In your best interests, 2005 acrylic on board 60 x 120 cm
In the first place, 2005 acrylic on board 60 x 120 cm
At all costs, 2005 acrylic on board 50 x 100 cm
From little things, 2005 acrylic on board 50 x 100 cm
One size fits all, 2005 acrylic on board 50 x 100 cm
Open all hours, 2005 acrylic on board 50 x 100 cm
Nathan Taylor: Concrete Poetics Nathan Taylor’s paintings seduce us on at least two levels. In his seemingly ‘found’ compositions, there is something akin to the literary genre of ‘concrete poetry’ practised by E.E. Cummings and Ezra Pound: a mode in which direct quotation from life is articulated by means of the poet’s acute understanding of pictorial grammar and punctuation, to release ‘music’ from the mundane forms. As a poet reinvigorates familiar words, the well-worn currency of daily exchange, Taylor lifts tired signifiers of the domestic into a more rarefied realm through composition: one in which their rhythm and rhyme is used to create ballad-like structures of complex but restrained emotion - or as the artist suggests, of the ‘sensual and nostalgic’. This is the first stage of the romance. Secondly: this ‘melody’ of the work creates an underlying pulse, a foot-tapping metre that acts as a fluid counterpoint to the more rigid, dense objects depicted; in terms of both their stylistic treatment and ontological weight. Dumb, mute objects, often of a certain age or era, radiate their significance to material culture, seemingly aware that they are among the building blocks of the ‘civilised’ world we inhabit. Yet these are not the dusty relics of an op-shop; nor the discarded, abject citizens of the refuse tip. These are objects worn smooth by use, patinated by the covetous attentions of routine, tenderly eroded in the warm sea of social space. They have been pre-loved. We too as the viewer seem invited to enter into this relationship with them. Taylor’s act of painting functions as yet another level of this devotional, organicising, entropic (even perhaps erotic) touch. The contours are modelled patiently; only very slightly more blurred – they are not a direct cast or ‘death-mask’ (as in a Barthe’s reading of photography) of the objects. Similarly, colours and tones are translated authentically, but subtly shifted into closer harmonies and nearer relationships; again, minimally reduced, worn-down, through their ‘use’ by the painter’s eye. One has the feeling that Taylor is drawn to a certain order of urban object. As with any object of reverie or reverence, the items he meditates upon invite us to fill them through contemplation, projected meaning – they are often literally empty, or only temporarily full, awaiting our investment. Shopping trolleys and irons; petrol pumps and syrup-dispensers – each functions as a vehicle or vessel; in part, for our displaced drives (in a Freudian sense) as well as for our fragile concept of society. As Taylor acknowledges: “I think that looking closer at ourselves at a domestic level helps create a greater awareness at a universal one.” His titles also implicitly refer to this wider cultural spectrum, but with the black-tinged humour of Ed Ruscha: ‘With Friends Like These’; ‘One Size Fits All’. However, there is perspicacity not pessimism in his tone (unlike the American). Taylor states that he is “fascinated with Australian culture and our never-ending ability to endure irony and self-criticism.” Unlike a sense of crisis in painting that in part provoked the hyper-realists of the US, Taylor, like the objects he depicts, endures; and this clear-eyed refusal to panic, to have faith in what is ‘real’ and of value, is in the final analysis, perhaps a timely message for us all. Kit Wise, October 2005 Kit Wise is an artist and art writer, currently lecturing in Fine Art in the Faculty of Art & Design, Monash University, Melbourne
THANKS TO S t e v e n J o y c e , K i t W i s e , P au l F l y n n , G i l l Ta y l o r a n d B i l l Ta y l o r ( f o r a l l h i s s e l f l e s s s a c r i f i c e s ) Special thanks to Jane Barlow for all her support and patience
www.nathantaylor.com.au C o p y r i g h t Š 2 0 0 5 N a t h a n Ta y l o r, K i t W i s e a n d B r i a n M o o re G a l l e r y
ISBN 0-9757024-3-2