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MADDER139:
No.1 VYNER STREET LONDON E2 9DG
4 Sept- 4 October 2009
Sucking-Chest-Wound
2009The hilarity at the core of Michael Lisle-Taylor’s work arises from
a dance with military service
that won’t let go. It’s an embrace that promotes its own laughter.
It probes the interfaces of insubordination
while acknowledging that discipline encodes behaviour that prevails when rupture
and
trauma take hold. Men and horses get blown-up: humour anaesthetises, repels
and provides a safe
passage back to the problem. Today, in Helmand, donkeys are used as roadside
bombs. It’s a world
of ‘shock and eeeyore.’ Stand back, it’s best not to get
in the way – perhaps it’s best not to get it
anyway.
What’s left in Lisle-Taylor when the laughter subsides? His skill for
a start, which refers to his
time in the service working with aircraft and weapons-handling equipment.
He’s good at adapting
Blues Ceremonial kit as well. His sewing is reliable and as matter-of-fact
as his way of assembling
his functional sculptures. Consequently the shredded uniforms, the dislocated
flags, the themes of
fragmentation and dispersal have the additional pathos of knowing how to destroy
such well made
things. In ‘Omm Papa’, Lisle-Taylor contrasts the paraphernalia
of childhood and play – rocking
horse, roundabout, see-saw – to put on show the evidence of this violent
protest.
In ‘Yeehaa’, Lisle-Taylor redirects the motif of the flag away
from its modernist rhetoric and
reclaims it as the emblematic device it always was. The work indicates the
rituals played out with
increasing regularity as troops are brought back from foreign service. The
flags that cover military
caskets are ceremonially folded in a particular way. The fragments of Old
Glory in this work are
seen through a matrix of folds and cuts, packed into triangular containers
and displayed in an inescapable
reference to the diagonals of the Union Jack. Consequently the image settles
on neither
one but reflects the uneasy alliance between the two. The shattered metaphors
of ‘Omm Papa’ in
consequence accrue problematic associations when American political equivocation
and popular
support for the IRA is factored in.
The 1982 Knightsbridge explosion is at the centre of this exhibition, but
it conjures other reverberations
from further afield. In 2008, Lisle-Taylor travelled to the Tien Shan mountains
in east Kazakhstan
in order to pick enough wild apples to make thirty litres of cider for his
work ‘Diaspora’.
His theme is dispersal – not the dispersal that results from the detonation
of malign devices but a
more insidious permutation of knowledge. The Tien Shan apples are the apples
of the original Fall,
the Garden of Eden Apples, the ones Milton discussed in ‘Paradise Lost’
– we learn also that this
beautiful region with its wild prelapsarian fruit became a nuclear testing
range before the Soviet
downfall. ‘Diaspora’ conveys its cargo of isotope-laden laughter
that conceals its own warning but
– as with the compelling nature of the other pieces in this show –
much of this particular hilarity
carries with it its collateral of pain as well.
Kieran Lyons, August 2009
Michael Lisle-Taylor was born in 1969 and was brought up in Pembrokeshire,
Wales. He graduated
from the Royal College of Art in 2006. This will be his second solo show with
the Gallery
and will be the first show in the Gallery’s new space at No.1 Vyner
Street. His works are held in
several collections including the David Roberts Art Foundation, the Saatchi
Collection and the Imperial
War Museum.
125 Magazine.
Rebellion issue; March 2008
Lisle-Taylor’s transition from aircraft mechanic to sculptor has not
been without obstacles.
Aspirations to be a taxidermist ran aground at a young age and when a run
of botched badgers began to resemble an experimental fly farm, a change in
career was needed. After quitting his A-level art course, he joined the Royal
Navy and trained as an aircraft mechanic where his first year’s service
saw him deployed on Cold War operations around the arctic circle, then on
to mine clearance in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
Upon leaving the forces in 2000 (he remains a reservist), work placements
at The Royal Opera House, Bristol’s Old Vic and a theatre design course
at Wimbledon College led him to a Foundation in Art at Bath, before specialising
in sculpture on the BA course at Chelsea College of Art. His 2004 degree show,
entitled ‘Bedlam’, was a great success and offered an insight
into the work to come. Included in the show was a Grenadier Guard tunic modified
into a straightjacket, and Lisle-Taylor achieved the dream of any British
art student when Charles Saatchi bought the piece and immediately exhibited
it in his County Hall gallery, on top of which, days later, The Imperial War
Museum acquisitioned art from the same show for their permanent collection.
After graduation, he was awarded a place at the Royal College of Art where
he refined his military-influenced modus operandi, which culminated in a final
show at the RCA entitled ‘Tournament of the Dirty Nurse’, comprising
of a compact and distorted boxing ring which was later broken down and airlifted
beneath a helicopter during a Royal Marines military exercise and reconstructed
on the summit of a Welsh peak. Adding performance to his skills as a carpenter,
seamstress and strategist, the exercise itself became integral to the piece,
with the accumulated scars on its highly stitched canvas adding gravitas to
the work.
One year on and Lisle-Taylor has completed his first solo show at the Madder
139 Gallery in London, a show which included a piece entitled ‘Maiden
Voyage’, a Heath Robinson-style submarine that he took cave diving under
the Brecon Beacons. His cavalier attitude to safety eventually scared off
a leading diver hired to support him. Never one to be defeated,
Lisle-Taylor went ahead with the dive alone, the submarine later exhibited
alongside a number of pieces including ‘Blood, Sweat and Freckles’
- a flag framed as a ceremonial sarcophagus, inspired by a military shit-splatting
game. Don’t ask.
David Roberts Art Foundation Press Release Something Less, Something More,
20th March2008
draws together works from 14 International artists and is the second in a
series of exhibitions at Gallery One One One, featuring works from the David
Roberts collection. ... this exhibition explores the use of objects and ready-mades
in some recent works ...
Michael Lisle Taylor (born 1969, Wales): The sculptural work exists both as
relic - remains of an event, be it actual or imagined - and as an emotionally
charged object in itself. Lisle Taylor’s political work is brutally
honest, almost overburdened with meaning and history.
THE GUARDIAN PICK OF THE
WEEK May 26 2007
Michael Lisle-Taylor, Madder Rose, EC1
Brash machismo and absurdity, this recent RCA graduate's performances are
intrepid in the extreme.
MADDER139:
137-139 WHI TECROSS STREE T LONDON EC1Y 8J L
17 May–27 June 2007
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
‘Authors note’, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Mark
Twain
Michael Lisle-Taylor graduated from Sculpture at the Royal College last year,
prior to this he had
completed his BA at Chelsea. Before this he served 13 years in the military.
This will be Lisle-Taylor’s
first solo show, showcasing a body of work which encompasses sculpture, photography,
video, and
drawing, often as part of the execution of some seemingly hair brained scheme.
For Tournament of the Dirty Nurse 2006 he manufactured an ornately embroidered
boxing ring, then
hauled it up a mountain piece by piece for reconstruction at the summit. He
subsequently recruited former
colleagues to airlift the boxing ring. It dangled precariously through the
sky and then landed in an
anonymous UK airfield. The resulting video is both comic and gutsy, as if
the mechanics of war have been
raided by the artist.
For Madder 139, Lisle-Taylor will take a welded and upholstered submarine
invention on a cave-diving
escapade under the Welsh Hills. On May 16th we will be presenting the outcome
of this dangerous
endeavour, whatever this might be. So far it’s included the meticulously
drawn plans and construction of
the beautiful, though cumbersome vessel itself.
Hanging from your Daisy Chain 2007 will stand alone in the upper gallery,
a climbing frame tightly
corseted with sailing canvas, and bolted with sharp fixings. Too fragile and
vicious for its original purpose,
a pointless enterprise somehow made meaningful. Oddly seductive, it sits awaiting
its miss/use.
The sculptural work exists both as relic - remains of an event, be it actual
or imagined - and as thing in
itself. The work is brutally honest, almost overburdened with meaning and
with history. Each component is
sourced precisely, its motive reasoned, its implication planned, the use of
certain materials has become
policy.
Carpenter, seamstress and strategist, Lisle-Taylor follows elaborate working
processes, comparable to life
in the army. The architecture of conditioning; its ceremony and manoeuvres,
the spit and polish, the
uniforms and drill. It’s dignity reduced to absurdity, and dignified
once more - a blunt practice for these
muted times.
Wonder, terror, and something comic too. The illogicality of the task is set.