Exhibition: Laura Taylor – Speedboat Matchsticks, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, March 27 – April 8 2010
In a gallery, it may be impossible for an object to become completely useless. Laura Taylor will strip away the functionality from her ready-made sculptures, only to find new purposes for each assemblage.
Her raw materials are oddments of motorised scrap, dismembered toys, daubs of paint and hanging string. They don’t amount to much in isolation, but when built up into an “over-engineered apparatus” they take on new roles.
Taylor’s playful art promises to entertain and engage, even if it only partially works in a mechanical sense. And while the objects might fail to do what they ought, a spirit of optimism runs through her reconstructive project.
Speedboat Matchsticks is not her first experiment with function in a gallery context. In 2009 she produced a mixed media installation at Surface Gallery for their Open Show 2009.
Her contest entry was called Something That Produces Results, Kulit. It resulted in her winning. What her latest works may give rise to is anyone’s guess.
Written for Culture24.