JamFactory proudly presents the textile sculptures of Ivana Taylor in Lines of Affection, the fifth in a series of exhibitions that are displayed in the historic Phone Booths at the Adelaide Railway Station in conjunction with Renewal SA.
Ivana Taylor is an object artist and designer who creates tactile and functional forms that focus on the relationship between textiles and timber. She is an alumna of JamFactory’s Associate Program in the Furniture Studio and currently serves as the studio’s Production Manager. In her own practice, Taylor distils the process, texture and aesthetic qualities of textiles, which has evolved from a long-standing fixation on wrapping. The practical utilisation and conceptual understanding of wrapping has rich historical roots worldwide, including Ancient Egyptian mummification, the swaddling of babies and the Japanese art of furoshiki, or gift-wrapping. Her furniture designs are often heavily textured, reflecting a fascination for the role of visually and physically textural objects and encouraging presence by engaging multiple senses.
Drawn to wrapping for the soothing, rhythmic and physical process it provides, Taylor is also influenced by her Mother, whose work as a costume-maker for film, television and theatre imparted an attention to using cloth to transform the form or body that it clads. Expressive gestures, costumes or props are often the symbolic origins for each sculpture, which are highly abstracted in their final form and allow the viewer to interpret what the fluid form could represent. Moored to the wall or mounted on plinths, her sculptures use repetition, dynamic line work, colour and the tactility of textiles to invite the viewer to ‘redress’ or reframe their perception of themselves and the world around them, much in the same way that children activate an imagined world by dressing up.
Comprised of built linear structures that are wrapped in hand-dyed yarn, each piece expresses a harmonious tension and balance between the hard timber interior structure and the soft textile exterior. “Rigid form is transmuted into a soft, fluid and energised body through the gentle, meticulous act of wrapping,” Taylor says. “In my practice, I seek to create a visual and physical rhythm and a gentle, sensual tactility that feeds the eyes and much as the sense of touch.” Taylor’s knowledge and skill in fabric dyeing results in beautifully soft and vividly dynamic colours that serve to enhance both the form and tactility of the object through the idiosyncrasies of the hand-dyed yarn.
In Lines of Affection, Taylor’s Interloop series features a selection of continuous textile loop sculptures that explore her fascination with the rhythmic and meditative process of wrapping and the expressive presence of a single line. Floating suspended in space within the intimate confines of the historic phone booth, Taylor’s lively, expressive and joyful forms explore her fascination with the way that a simple continuous line can carve an evocative movement, relationship and experience into a formerly empty space. Wrapped in hand-dyed linen and cotton, the dynamic soft sculptures bring body to the line drawings that Taylor uses to distil an interpret gestures of physical affection, entanglement and unbridled movement.
Ivana Taylor is represented exclusively by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney.
