Imogen Taylor, Watercolours

29 Jul

Imogen Taylor

Watercolours

Michael Lett
312 Karangahape Road
Cnr K' Road and East St
Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland)
Aotearoa (New Zealand)

26 July – 26 August 2021

Imperfectly-perfect, each work in this new suite of watercolours by Imogen Taylor demonstrates a cunning and economical use of space. Taylor divides up small surface areas in various different ways, playing with composition, orientation and filling them with a range of shapes that sometimes recall landscapes and sometimes bodies. Taylor leans into the specific nature of watercolours and the ways that large areas of painted colour are irregular and uneven, betraying the way pigments mixed with water are manipulated by the brush before pooling and drying. Banal, everyday language and phrases are playfully used in the titles and these double-meanings reflect the ambiguity of the painted forms.Taylor is known for creating geometrical abstractions that engage and play with the forms and legacies of European Modernism. Though she draws from the abstracted forms and coloured juxtapositions of Cubism, Fauvism, and Russian Constructivism, her paintings are stripped of the masculine self-seriousness that saturates the source material. Instead, in their vibrant interplay of thickly applied colour and contrasts between imposing parallel lines and soft curves, the work is joyful, sincere, and pleasurable.

— Victoria Wynne-Jones (exhibition text)