About
TJ Boulting is pleased to present the first solo show with the gallery of British artist Jennifer Taylor, âRumour From Ground Control.' Taking its lead from David Bowie's classic song âSpace Oddity', Taylor has created a surreal and celestial, predominantly white installation of objects, whose apparent serenity belies darker, underlying tensions relating to isolation, loss of control and physical and psychological stress.
The objects are tactile and alluring in form; ovoids, curved and shapely, or linking to human physical dimensions, and with almost perceptible functions. One can imagine some as furniture, a rocking chair form, or a placebo lover, whose form fits snugly to the body. Yet there are also cut-outs which suggest the stocks, or a hanging shade that could just hold the head. Constraining the body, the objects resonate a certain control and dominance, while the bleached palette suggests something removed, a shell of reality, the function twisted in some weird perversion. This vacant and bizarre apparatus seeks to muddle the mind, triggering a sense of bewilderment, something either thrilling or threatening. In Bowie's metaphorical song, a fictional astronaut called Major Tom looses radio contact with Ground Control and floats off into oblivion, here we are presented with a deserted environment, and a sense of abandonment.
Though the body is absent among this malformed equipment, there are still suggestions of obscure functions and a relationship with the body. The objects shift in role between ones of torture or pleasure, where personal fantasies are imagined physical actions. As many of the objects would restrict or imprison an individual this in turn leads to an underlying and unsettling sense of anxiety.
Formally there is an important relationship between the objects, a dialogue or understanding of one another as they occupy the same space. Often unified by their whiteness and removed from familiar contexts, new collective and displaced narratives emerge.
The work stems from a previous project âGround Control' at The Wapping Project this year, a vertical hanging installation of white objects like a celestial gymnasium in its tall hydraulic tower. âRumour From Ground Control' extends the themes of isolation and control, by honing the forms of the individual objects and their relationship to us and each other in the space. It becomes an exploration of human thresholds pain or pleasure - and their psychological limits.
Biography:
Jennifer Taylor was born in 1982 in Wales and now lives and works in London. She graduated with an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 2007 and previously studied at The Ruskin, University of Oxford. Taylor has had solo exhibitions at The Wapping Project (2011), Flowers East, London (2010) and The Wyer Gallery, London (2008). She has also participated in group shows internationally including the prestigious Jen Rà ªve, at Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris.
TJ Boulting is the new gallery space of Trolley, which relocated to Riding House Street, W1 from Redchurch Street, Shoreditch in October 2011.
