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.