nichola taylor artist ecologist
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Pedestrian opens at Brewhouse Theatre & Arts Centre, Coal Orchard, Taunton, Somerset TA1 1JL on 11 October 2019 with the Private View on 12 October between 4pm-8pm. This exhibition showcases paintings, etchings, 3D work and drawings  resulting from a two-year collaborative project with fellow artist Fiona Bradford exploring the urban fringe. The works all reference motifs of the urban with a nod to humour.
​www.thebrewhouse.net/event/pedestrian/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3bv05MFS74/
https://twitter.com/BidTaunton/status/1182611606615810048?s=20
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Project V: The possibility of everything 
28 April to 22 May 2016 
The Stone Space, Leytonstone, London
 


The show brings together four artists who explore the possibilities of materials, medium and process through drawing, painting, photography and moving image.

The exhibition highlights the role of process and materiality for each artist and encompasses shared themes and parallels between creative, psychological and environmental territories.

Focus is placed on the transformation of materials, which include the everyday, domestic as well as processes or tools of “specialist” status, such as the painter’s pigments or surgeon’s scalpel, revealing how these materials are transformed by means of imagination, subversion or gesture.

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 Talking waves 
30 April to 2 May 2016 
​The Bomb Shelter, Beer, Devon
showcases a dynamic collaboration with photographer Sa
m Rose.

"This collaboration with my friend Nikki Taylor has enabled me to expand what I do by forcing me to think more about the composition and content of my photographs in more detail, and respond to ​someone’s artistic response to them.  It has also been great fun!"
 

Sam Rose says...
When my good friend Nikki Taylor finished her fine art Masters degree and suggested that we collaborated on a project I honestly thought we would never get around to it.  I mean, life is busy and collaborations need time, don’t they?  Well, a year or so on, here we are, a small but perfectly formed collaborative exhibition called Talking waves, popping up in Beer over the forthcoming bank holiday weekend.
 
It all started because I was talking to Nikki about my photos and her Masters at AUB, and we agreed that we liked each other’s work and it might be fun to do something together.  I find  her work fascinating; very, intricate and peaceful, and demonstrating a huge amount of skill and patience.  I like the simplicity very much and the tendency towards minimalism is something I try to reach in my photographs. 
 
So we thought about what was possible, as I had never done this before, and I decided to take a photo specifically for her to reflect on, and that drew on my emotions rather than ‘just’ a landscape. The result was Angry skies, below, taken at East Beach at West Bay (‘my’ beach) and it has become the source image for the collaboration.

Nikki then took this away, along with some others from my portfolio, and thought about how to respond.  The results, which you can see at the exhibition, are sculptural hanging pieces that involve stitched fishing line and very high quality handmade paper.   The inspiration is drawn particularly from a small part of the source photo, and the work de-constructs the image down to a very raw form.

Nikki Taylor says...                                                        
These works respond to the images of sea and rock-scapes taken by my friend and photographer; Sam Rose. In trying to understand the nature of being in the environment and experiencing its elemental forces, each work has been subjected to the sea in some way as part of the engagement. The paper was firstly soaked in the sea, allowed to dry and then punctured and strung. For some pieces the work was then ‘painted’ with sea water collected from the same site. The work is only possible because of the collaboration with Sam and the authenticity of the dialogue is evident in each piece.

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Interview for the Arts University Bournemouth A to B Alumni Trip project :
Nikki Taylor on being part of Project V, and 'The Possibility of Everything'.

 
CMR Gallery, Redruth, Cornwall
Nikki Taylor graduated this year from MA Fine Art. She is a member of Project V, who are exhibiting ‘The Possibility of Everything‘. 

“The pieces the result of a distillation process. These pieces are about presence and absence and reference my work as an ecologist; of the elusiveness of finding protected and rare species and the difficulties with that. As an ecologist I spend quite a lot of time surveying for wildlife and it is easier to confirm presence that to prove absence. This series is in direct response to that dilemma.

Before I did the MA I did a post grad in Art and Science at Central St. Martins and I think I needed to move towards the purest form that I see and feel about a subject.  My work is driven by that now, not about seeing a figure or a landscape and drawing it.

During the MA I thought I would use a methodology that fits with my science background but I also wanted to push myself.  I am not happy about seeing blood so decided to do some work shadowing surgeons. I had the great opportunity to sit in on facial reconstruction surgery. I watched in amazement as they worked so precisely and thought about the stakes; a wrong move could sever a nerve. I also realised I had never held a scalpel and I wanted to know what it would feel like . And when I did there was this outpouring of cutting.

It’s maybe hard to see but each cut is a definite and indelible mark.
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There are plans to do more in this series and also a plan to do work that is completely different from this.” 

 



​Links

​​​​Fiona Bradford
Talking waves
Sam Rose photography
The Stone Space
​
The Possibility of Everything
Peggy Cozzi

Jenny Pritchard
Arts University Bournemouth
TheGallery, AUB

​Caroline Mornement
​​​Visual Arts South West
​
British Women Artists
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