Mixed Media
2021
In a deep timber, white painted, custom-built frame: H 41cm W 120cm D 13cm
This work fits within the large body of three-dimensional wall hung work that I have been engaged in for the past four years or so, it is closely related to my now extensive Elemental Series and to the pieces I have been making that are informed by direct experience of forceful, dynamic coastal interaction.
The idea of making a work from part of the neck of an old Sitar led me to think about linearity, and as the wooden remnant has some subtle decorative features, these reminded me a little of Edwardian and Victorian seaside piers, but also made me think about the meandering, convoluted, natural linearity of coastlines, and the straight and rigid linearity of the seaside pier.
But above all, of the opposing linearities of coastline and pier, and the interactive physical dynamics that a substantial, fixed manufactured structure causes when intruding at a more or less a ninety-degree angle into a massive elemental, global liquid phenomenon – the sea.
An immersive, ever mobile, natural substance influenced by the winds and the tides, which swirls and eddies around and amongst the human-made engineered structure, that has the potential to overwhelm it – and sometimes does.
In symbolic terms, another example of liminal interaction, of the coastal interplay of hard and soft, an interpretative, three-dimensional, interfusive allusion to phenomenological experience rather than a prescriptive illusion.
George Taylor
February 2022
