MICHAEL TAYLOR BOY. BOAT. BAT.

BOY. BOAT. BATMICHAEL TAYLOR

30.08.2018 - 13.10.2018 WHATIFTHEWORLD is pleased to present BOY. BOAT. BAT. a new solo exhibition by Michael Taylor.

Figurative drawings, scenic paintings and sculptural elements are brought together as an installation in this body of work, creating a vibrant collage of styles and recurring motifs that are present throughout Taylor’s oeuvre. Extrapolating on his signature themes, Taylor has woven together an absurdist narrative using the characters of the Boy, Boat and Bat as touch points in his unfolding drama.

‘Boy’: the figure

Taylor’s troupe of pirouetting males come to represent a collaged portrait of his experience of the gay community or “tribe”, presented as an iteration of dandyism and flamboyant gesture. The characters that garnish the artist’s paper are non-placeable; they trump both a contemporary context and a South African one. They are a topsy-turvy fruit salad of misplaced masculinities in coming-of-age narratives or captured in intimate moments of male-bonding.

‘Boat’: the landscape

Persisting with the performative in his notion of ‘place’, Taylor uses narrative-driven scenes to create a makeshift imaginarium where the boat is a metaphor for the male figure. The question of ego seems to approach in the boat’s meditation between the conscious and subconscious. The boat — a symbol of leisure — forms the romantic backdrop for escapism, perhaps a hedonistic holiday in an exotic locale. It reoccurs like a visual punctuation mark, becoming a placeholder for both figurative and abstract ideas of storytelling, setting the stage for a fantasy play.

‘Bat’: the narrative

The narrative of BOY. BOAT. BAT. is a fictional one, and importantly, that of an outsider. Humour and satire are used in the staging of the compositions and propositions of paintings, while the theatrics of display mimic the theatre as a home of the absurd and exaggerated. The viewer is urged to see the exhibition as a set, with mini-vignettes or dramas unfolding between the characters. Theatrical poses and exaggerated gestures point to the idea of a ‘dance’ or choreographed rehearsal. Personal mythologies are at play in the curation of the show; suggestive bulges in striped pantaloons / orange onesies playfully call out to drawings of volcanoes at the brink of eruption. This ‘explosive potential’ of the overlapping vignettes seems to draw together various themes of the show: humour, fictional desire and sexuality.

Text by Lindsey Raymond


30.08.2018 - 13.10.2018 BOY. BOAT. BAT.

“It was the famous Otis Redding song that made Beckett want to live in a houseboat, and in 1973 he finally did. (If you assumed the Beckett in question is the celebrated Samuel, your assumption is dubious. Our hero was a ginger-haired fellow with a penchant for slacks who never attained fame, but then, he never tried. Beckett only ever practiced the art of watching, often mistaken for time-wasting by everyone around him. Everyone around him was wrong.)

Beckett discarded his old life and everyone around him like a worn out coat at the end of winter. He caught a bus to Sausalito and took a cheap room in a beat-up double-decker barge, offered for rent by an old bat named Blanch. Of the existing inhabitants of the houseboat, it is Russell who remembers Beckett’s arrival most clearly. Usually more of a feeler, in this instance Russell was the watcher, observing the new tenant’s approach from the top storey, framed by his tiny window. Russell was recovering from a series of stormy affairs, but as he saw Beckett clutching the side of the motorboat driven by their landlord, the intensity drained from these memories and leaked into the present moment, lending it a bright and ready vividness that stung his eyes. It was as if seeing Beckett was enough to turn Russell into a watcher. As if watching could be contagious. Russell stopped his watching when he registered the distinct feeling that for him, the wait is over. (He described this scene in one of his four unfinished novels, in a chapter entitled “The Coming”. The passage is memorable, as far as Russell’s usually dull writing goes, in that it mentioned seven specific shades of orange in its description of the sun reflected on the water: Syracuse; Papaya Whip; Atomic Tangerine; Tea Rose; Spanish Orange; Bittersweet and Alloy.)

It was Tricia who met Beckett at the door. She had no inclination, as she took his bags while making small-talk with Blanch, that this man would be instrumental in her landing the part-time job at the café where she first met Frank, the Freddie Mercury-lookalike frontman of failed glam rock duo The Jettisons, who would unknowingly father her daughter Tina, whose son Ty (short for Tyrone, and Tricia’s grandson, if you’re following) would become the drummer of blog-rock turned corporate indie band Vampire Regatta, the millennials who would bring that tinny country fuzz sound, first popularised by Marty Robbins in the 60’s, back to the “ironic mainstream” in 2020. She could not know, because all of this was in the future, cards still being shuffled by the tricky fingers of time. Meanwhile, back on the boat, Beckett found its gentle sway extremely conducive to his watching and stayed for more than a decade. I wish I could show you the things he saw. Can you at least imagine bits of it?

(A side-note in closing: While Vampire Regatta’s hit “Underwater Pyjama Party” would never attain the iconic status of the famous Otis Redding song that was the catalyst for Beckett’s move, it will inspire a renewed enthusiasm for a lifestyle the Instagram-generation would call #thathouseboatlife. Would a little historical detail like this make Otis Redding, a man with an interest in tides, smile knowingly? And what would it make the other Beckett, the celebrated Samuel, say? My best guess would be: something about the sun.)”

An accompanying story by Bibi Slippers


30.08.2018 - 13.10.2018 ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Michael Taylor (born 1979) is a South African artist who lives and works in Cape Town. He studied at Stellenbosch University, where he completed his Master’s Degree in Visual Art. Primarily working in the mediums of painting and drawing, his work explores notions around narrative art, absorbing ideas from illustration and abstract representation. In 2013, Michael was shortlisted as 100 Young Painters of Tomorrow by Thames & Hudson. His work is also included in the Woodner Collection.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work can be described as ironic, illustrative, and self-reflexive pictures. I draw comparisons between personal and cultural knowledge – themes and narratives that inform my everyday thinking. These interpretations are fundamentally concerned with image-text paradigms – the subtleties between visual thoughts and language. I look at these relationships, particularly the interplay between an image and its adjoined title, as concepts for my work. And I am always interested in working with humour and ridicule, ways of communicating that are disarming, and those aspects pointing to being simply human. It’s these elements, I believe, that will make the viewer become aware of themselves when reading the image.

BOY. BOAT. BAT.MICHAEL TAYLOR

BEACH BALLET, 2018INK AND FLASHE ON MESH FABRICAPPROX 320 X 1000 CM R 55 000 EX VAT


ACME NEIGHBOURSSTREETS AHEAD, 2018COLLAGE ON BOARD 80 X 60 CM SOLD


ACME NEIGHBOURS MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, 2018COLLAGE ON BOARD80 X 60 CM R 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED) RESERVED

INSTALLATION VIEW


PROUD TO POODLE, 2017GOUACHE & PENICIL ON PAPER105 X 85 CMR 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


DUBIOUS, 2017GOUACHE & PENCIL ON PAPER84 X 105 CM SOLD


TRICKY FINGERS, 2018PENCIL & FLASHE ON PAPER102 X 72 CM R 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)RESERVED


NIGHT FEVER, 2018INK AND FLASHE ON PAPER AND WOOD APPROX 150 X 270 CM R 55 000 EX VAT


THE INSTRUCTORS, 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER 90 X 70 CMSOLD


THE GO-GO GETUP, 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER90 X 70 CM SOLD


FROM THE TOP , 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER90 X 70 CMR 42 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)RESERVED


UNDERWATER PYJAMA PARTY, 2018PENCIL & FLASHE ON PAPER150 X 125 CM R 75 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


THE JETTISONS, 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER150 X 125 CM SOLD


VAMPIRE REGATTA, 2018ACRYLIC & FLASHE ON CANVAS80 X 60 CM SOLD


THE WAIT IS OVER, 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER 150 X 125 CMSOLD


COUNTRY FUZZ, 2017ACRYLIC ON CANVAS80 X 60 CM R 38 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


STORMY AFFAIR, 2018ACRYLIC & FLASHE ON CANVAS 100 X 120 CM SOLD

INSTALLATION VIEW


THE COMING, 2017ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 50 X 70 CMR 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


HOLIDAY IS PUDDING, 2018ACRYLIC ON CANVAS40 X 30 CM R 30 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)RESERVED

INSTALLATION VIEW

ADDITIONAL WORKS


CABANA TERROR, 2018MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER 150 X 125 CM R 75 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


DOMESTIC THEATRICS, 2018GOUACHE AND PENCIL ON PAPER R 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


JAMES BOND PARTY PIER, 2018ACRYLIC AND FLASHE ON CANVAS 50 X 40 CM R 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


MY NEW CAREER, 2018 GOUACHE AND ACRYLIC ON PAPER 90 X 70 CM R 42 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


PAPER SUNSET, 2018 ACRYLIC AND COLLAGE ON CANVAS 60 X 50 CM R 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


THE GOLDEN ONE, 2018ACRYLIC ON CANVAS80 X 60 CM R 35 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


THE SCOUT, 2018 ACRYLIC ON PAPER150 X 125 CM R 75 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)


DEATH RETURNS TO VENICE, 2018MIIXED MEDIA ON PAPER 150 X 125R 75 000 EX VAT (FRAMED)

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MICHAEL TAYLOR BOY. BOAT. BAT. - WHATIFTHEWORLD

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