Pieces by Jennie Taylor

PIECES

Jennie Taylor

PIECES

Jennie Taylor

A text in response to hashtag WIP

Kian Benson Bailes

Orla McHardy

Anna Spearman

Roscommon Arts Centre

14th April – 2nd June 2023

The studio was littered with stained cotton rags. Some used to clean scraps, some for painting. They had spots of crimson, deep blues and muddy beiges, evenly and chaotically spread across their surface area. They were mostly crumpled in positions that marked the last gesture or most recent defeat or satisfying finish. Some of them looked like little tents, pointed where the finger was furiously rubbing or happily dabbing a decision onto a surface. Some had been around longer; less representative of recent efforts. Their whiteness between the colours was discoloured into peaky greys. They hardened into sculptures of themselves or what their casts would look like if someone would cast them. This accidental permanence could have been a triumph if they were lit properly or presented in isolation, but they were in the corner where the excess from a swept floor would end up in the absence of a dustpan.

It was a shared space on the top floor of a Georgian building, facing the river. Her entrance to the studio followed the ascendance of three flights of stairs, which were like shelving units that contained her day so far. The stairs were a struggle, not necessarily due to lack of fitness but because using them was the last breath of a regimented, structured day, one which she had to squish inside of. With no alternative route, she found this stairwell tedious in its compliance and probably tiring on top of that. As the door opened, the air always felt thick. This full air slowed down the arc and motion of the door opening. Every time she walked in she felt the same level of substance. The distinction between this entrance and her day up to this point made opening the door an event. Being in this carpeted space, not fit for purpose but fit for purpose, its pregnancy was palpable and its potential, divine.

The day and the stairs were beneath her now. She felt like she was standing on top of the blocks of her day, standing on what’s typically out of her control, but now, she was king of it. The structure of meek meetings, poor banter and micromanagement were now an underworld.

Once she settled in this pleasure, she put on a red sweater which was a constant, providing comfort and familiar itches. In her absence, it hung facing the window. Midday sun bounced off the river and onto the sweater, making faded pinks out of its certain red. A removal. A gift.

She considered photographing the hardened rags, but instead, using a steamer from a now shut vintage clothes store, she softened them. The hovering care of the device, puffing controlled bursts of steam brought them into life and messed with the sequence of their fate. She was happy with

a new consistency amongst the rags and itemised them in her notebook. The list long and clear, she titled each rag with one word, any word that she thought of at first glance. The process of grasping this multiplicity, this detail and care for what had been temporary tools or discarded objects, was pleasing and orderly.

Using her electric sewing machine, she decided to combine the rags into one massively stained and buoyantly patterned sheet, like Bacon’s wall palette, only less pictorial. For months, it acted as a temporary curtain. She used it to take naps inside of veiled peace and it was a home during periods between tenancies. A collapsible material. Her sleep the only stable thing.

The curtain started to flake off bits of paint, disrupting her naps like flickers of leaks. She eventually de-installed the curtain and rolled it up like a rushed fold of a bedsheet in a busy house. The unresolved status of the fabric lost its quality and began to trouble her.

The studio (which was relatively spacious) had accumulated unwanted or yet to be used objects. Offcuts of plywood, lumps of foam, an inkless printer, a bag of clay and a vacuum cleaner were amongst the stuff which had enough range in scale to form a heap instead of merely a pile. Given that there was space for excess stuff, she didn’t feel pressured to address it or use anything in it. She enjoyed its hectic potential and the occasional lead that one of its components would offer. On this occasion, the vacuum cleaner stood out.

Her worried, swirling thoughts about what to do with the patchwork of rags had a brief moment of precision when her eyes locked on the vacuum cleaner. The purchase was immediate. This was her solution for now. She rummaged until she found a durable bag, refolded the fabric and placed it inside its new host. Inserting the nozzle into the bag, she hoovered the air until it shrunk and sucked the clear, clingy plastic. Perfect. It was a like a big word holding lots of hidden meanings or a secret hut that children would play in, password to enter. It was hers, purely full of her logic, her curly sequences, and her history.

This untitled, crucial object remained proud in her studio and kept her company while she worked on other, more external projects. Its presence, although seemingly static, had a brilliantly stimulating washing-machine-in-the-middle-of-the-day energy. Although she fully embraced the joy it gave her, she knew she must get ahead of its lifecycle and make a plan for its next phase. It was time to make public this delight.

Months of planning, budgets and strategies brought her to a widely marketed lead up to a public unveiling of the sewn rags. The idea was, she would stand at the top of the steps of the city hall at 12pm on a jittery spring day and unpack the piece in drumroll-like anticipation. The day soon came, and the crowd filled the main street. A hum of mellowed festivity filled the minutes leading up to the unveiling. Bags of glass vials were passed through the crowd without any explanation, just that there was a vial for everyone to take.

The crowd hushed as she stood at the top of the steps. Using her pocketknife, she cut the plastic and pulled the piece out, unintendedly birth-like. She quietly marvelled at the sensation. Arms outstretched; she held the piece for everyone to see. It had new, deep creases, new opportunities. The traces of sewing and wrinkes guided her to tear the piece into tiny bits. The day offered a couple of moments of stillness, letting them neatly drop at her feet as she tore them.

After her last tear, she scooped and scrunched them into her fists, extended her arms up and over the crowd, long as a crane. She released her fists dispersing them out to the crowd, making it rain in rags. At the exact moment the rags were in the air, on came a shower, quick and straight. The raindrops caught the rags in motion, mixing the dabs of paint and dust and excess, extending the edges of the pieces and multiplying their form. The crowd instinctively knew to hold up the vials and catch a drop of coloured water and disintegrated cloth. Threads floated in contained blues and reds like precious worms. She thrilled at her timing, her dispersal and how, now, the piece had a mosaic of owners.

There have been known efforts to solidify and remake the original piece, but the resistance from a majority of the owners was too strong. The drops and threads remain corked in the stored vials, sometimes glowing in light-catching flutters and mostly blending in amongst countertop spice racks or mantelpiece ornaments or bedside tables.

About Roscommon Arts Centre's Visual Art Writer In Residence

Jennie Taylor is the Roscommon Arts Centre’s Visual Art Writer in Residence for 2022. During this time Jennie is invited to write critical texts on selected exhibitions and projects happening across the county. The intention of this residency is to allow writers to experiment with their writing style and explore new ways of disseminating their work. The writings will be available at Roscommon Arts Centre and online as they are published.

Jennie Taylor is a fiction and arts writer. Her practice draws from particle physics, Agential Realism and micro-histories. Areas of concern include proximity, locality, contemporary pedagogies, theorising empirical knowledge, and fictioning art history. A graduate of Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, in 2014 she completed her MA, Art in the Contemporary World, National College of Art & Design. She has published her work in Critical Bastards Magazine, The Stinging Fly and Visual Arts Newsletter. Jennie lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.

Kian Benson Bailes is an Irish artist residing in the northwest of Ireland. He graduated from IADT, Dublin in 2016, his multifaceted practice explores rural Ireland, visual language and identity politics. His recent exhibitions include ‘Bog Cottage: Life in the Community’ The Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo, ‘Queer As You Are’ Luan Gallery, Athlone and ‘Shiftings’ Kilkenny Arts Office, Kilkenny.

Orla Mc Hardy is an artist and educator. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally. Working through expanded animation, video, text, documentary, collage, sculptural installation and within a tradition of feminism(s), her current work examines where value is placed (and not placed) on the hidden time of care, love and labour.

Anna Spearman is a visual artist based in Sligo. Her studio practice is concerned with the vast and intricate material world that she encounters in her day to day life, and the curious and playful language inherent in the processes of both object-making and painting.

Jennie Taylor