Jacqueline Taylor
Website
Biography
Sydney-based artist, Jacqueline Taylor, obtained her Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts from TAFE NSW, and is currently completing her Bachelor of Creative Practice. Whilst studying she participated in eight group exhibitions and entered the Blue Mountains Print Prize, in which she received a highly commended award for her first completed lino print. Specialising in alternative photographic processes, Jacqueline has embraced chance, ephemerality, and experimentation.
Life through Art, a podcast by Jacqueline Taylor
Art provokes, inspires, reveals, and connects. Through art you gain a greater understanding of your life and the world in which you live. Join artist Jacqueline Taylor as she explores and examines Life through Art. If you're seeking to discover new processes, artists, and artworks, this show is for you.
Discussing Lunar Cycles and Tidal Forces, with Jacqueline Taylor
May 10, 2022
Through today’s episode I take you on a journey into my creative practice and my bodies of works, Lunar Cycles and Tidal Forces. Both projects will be exhibited at the Bachelor of Creative Practice: Visual Arts Graduand Exhibition 2022; on show at Watt Space Gallery in Newcastle, NSW, from the 15th to the 27th of June 2022. Join me as I take you on a journey of process and discovery.
Artist Statement
Concept
‘We know time only indirectly by what happens in it, by observing change and permanence . . .’ (Kubler 2013, p.29), raising the question, if nothing is experienced is time actually happening? My works investigate this question and explore the relationship between time, experience, change, control, and chance; the underpinning concepts of my practice for the past four years.
For this exhibition I am presenting two bodies of works Lunar Cycles and Tidal Forces. In Lunar Cycles, the moon represents change, a constant force pushing and pulling on time and our experiences. Whereas the tides in Tidal Forces, represents how time is continually reshaped through the powerful process of change.
Lunar Cycles
Lunar Cycles reflects my continued exploration of circles, initially employed as representations of the mind and my own mental health. Within Lunar Cycles the circular shapes have emerged as physical representations of the moons eight phases, and as the conceptual representation of how change remakes time.
Lunar Cycles incorporates animation, and the alternative photographic processes of chemigrams and lumen prints. The chemigram process involves forming an image by painting darkroom chemicals onto light-sensitive photographic paper. Additionally, resists are applied to the paper to slow down the paper’s development, creating varying patterns and colours. Lumen prints are solar photograms, in which organic material is placed on unexposed photographic paper and then placed in the sun. Sunlight shines on the paper and through the organic material, creating an image of the object. If left unfixed continued light exposure will cause the image to continually evolve and change.
Chemigrams were chosen as the chemigram imagery I produce suggests visions of planets, and galaxies, creating a connection between the moon and the imagery. Additionally, when chemigrams and lumen prints are not fixed properly, exposure to light can continually alter their appearance, demonstrating how human intervention and chance experiences can potentially change an object or person and reform time (Chan 2013, p.53).
Tidal Forces
Tidal Forces highlights the relationship between the moon and the tides, cohesively drawing the two bodies of work together. This work evolved from my call and response collaborative work, in which my life was represented through line and the collaborative process. Through Tidal Forces I am engaging in a call and response collaboration with the natural elements, mimicking the way in which the moon pushes and pulls upon the oceans.
Tidal Forces incorporates printmaking, audio, and the alternative photographic processes of cyanotypes and cyanolumens. The cyanotype process produces images in a blue hue. Images are formed through the reaction of a solution of iron salts, painted on paper, to sunlight. Objects or negatives placed on top of the paper stop sections from being developed, creating silhouettes, shapes, or images. Cyanolumen prints are formed by combining the cyanotype and lumen print processes.
Each work created, experienced its own distinctive moment in time. Chance encounters with the sea produced a multitude of unexpected markings and imagery, highlighting how chance plays a part in reshaping time, artworks, and ostensibly our lives.