Intricate assemblages by Taarn Scott

Taarn Scott is a contributing artist in the group exhibition All is Full of Love at Broker in Queenstown. Here, curator Wesley John Fourie speaks to Scott about these artworks that combine pencil rubbings and miniature ceramics.

Taarn Scott, Views, 2021, textile print, fabric, pencil, charcoal, ceramic. Courtesy of the artist

Wesley John Fourie: To begin this conversation, can you talk a little bit about the pieces you have included in the exhibition, All is Full of Love, at Broker?

Taarn Scott: The works in this exhibition are an extension of an earlier woodcut series. I spent part of last year experimenting with large-scale woodcuts into old doors and have enjoyed the challenge of printing them. Pencil rubbings preserve the doors as objects and tend to give all the marks a different feel, allowing for a gradiented and changeable print. These particular prints are from the same door panel, reworked with charcoal; or in artworks like Views they are layered rubbings. Bringing the ceramic pieces in provides some magpie detail and helps the artworks read as objects rather than flat marks.

This series is quite different from your practice when we first met, which has been a joy for me to watch develop. Can you speak about the change in direction?

These artworks have helped me figure out how to bring together different threads, rather than seeing different disciplines as separate. The prints feel playful through the addition of ceramics, cut-outs and jewellery. I enjoy the subtlety of the pencil quite a lot, however seeing this particular series develop from that feels exciting.

I really like the chained ceramic attachments on a few of the artworks, the idea of linkage between these different pieces and places and spaces in time.

Thank you. I wanted to make these particular artworks feel whole, and for me, as straight prints they hadn’t achieved that. I had a whole stack of unwearable ceramic rings sitting in the studio and was playing around with the idea of using elements of the prints to frame ceramics. It's fun to combine them both, as all are in pursuit of the same understanding but emerge so differently. The rings explore wearability, they resist and dictate how the body interacts with the piece whereas the rubbings are an archive of marks that try to ‘draw’ the body back into a physical, laborious process.

Installation view, All is Full of Love, curated by Wesley John Fourie, Broker Galleries, Queenstown, August 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Broker Galleries

Taarn Scott, studio view, July 2021. Courtesy of the artist

Taarn Scott, Tethering, 2021, textile print, fabric, pencil, chain, eyelets. Courtesy of the artist

Taarn Scott, studio view, July 2021. Courtesy of the artist

All is Full of Love, curated by Wesley John Fourie, Broker Galleries, Queenstown, August–September 2021

Related: Wesley John Fourie interviews other exhibition artists Alice Alva and Hana Pera Aoake

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