Jennifer Taylor
I work with live performance, sculpture and film to explore ancient mysticism and imagined sci-fi futures. My practice considers the remnants of existence: neolithic structures, ritualistic artefacts and throw-away novelty ephemera. My overloaded installations and chaotic sets have a sense of crisis that draw upon the sublime horror or endless seas of landfill. I am interested in post-human possibilities and the fusion of technology with the body. My performances often explore processes of cyborgisation, cryostasis, resurrection and rebirth.
In anarchic live events, groups of performers join me to enact absurd make-believe ceremonies that link to historical fertility rituals, magic, witchcraft, science or religious observances. Mirrored pyramids, papier-mâché caves, foil stone circles and rubble-filled rooms become colourful illuminated stage sets.
These fantasy worlds are inhabited by performers adorned in ornate carnivalesque costumes and masks made from an eclectic array of low-tech found materials; bike lights, shiny fragments and broken malfunctioning technologies.
I endlessly gather objects from the urban landscape; from the streets and skips, repurposing these relics of consumerism into glittering ‘jewels’ within my immersive installations and elaborate makeshift costumes.
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