Caitlin Eyre
Caitlin Eyre writes about Jess Taylor in Neoterica 2024.
Primarily focusing on digital methods of artistic expression, artist Jess Taylor utilises her multidisciplinary practice to explore fictional horror and utilise it as a vehicle for interrogating social norms. Driven by her interest in monsters, voyeurism and depictions of female brutality, sadism and masochism, Taylor’s sculptural works explore the aesthetics and narratives of the horror genre through a distinctly empowered feminist gaze. While Taylor has always used her own body as a site for exploration of broader themes related to women, it is only in recent years that she has presented narratives of her own lived experience in her work, focusing on experiences of pregnancy, child rearing and mothering, the expectations they demand and how she herself fits within them.
In Year Zero (2024), Taylor presents three sculptural installations that speak to how recent significant personal events have resulted in a ‘year zero’: the complete collapse and destruction of the past and the awakening of a brand new way of thinking, living and being. ‘Year Zero is a time outside of time, a time which does not exist, a time that comes at the death of one type of order, before the birth of another,’ Taylor says. ‘It is a time of potential, a precipice to stand on before taking the plunge into the new.’1
In the titular Year Zero, Taylor’s impassive golden mask-like face splits open to reveal the ravenous creature buried deep within. With its fierce, fanged jaws gnashing widely, this internal figure speaks to the hunger and desire that has always lurked within and that Taylor felt she must repress in order to be perceived as a good woman, partner and mother. Once imprisoned under the chains of societal expectations of womanhood and motherhood, the monster serves as a powerful warning of what can happen when these inner desires and the hunger for more are repeatedly repressed and denied.
The sinister veiled figure in On the Square, On the Level clutches a set of scales in each of its three arms, which seem poised in readiness to take measure of our deeds and judge us accordingly. The multitude of scale-bearing arms speaks to the never-ending weight of judgement that is cast upon us and which we cast on each other, almost to the point of absurdity. While there is indeed a menacing air to this work, for Taylor it is a display of empowerment that allows her to reclaim some of the power that was once wielded against her and instead judge on her own terms. In depicting the demon of judgement it is, in the proud tradition of the horror genre, exorcised and rendered harmless.
Call Me Little Sunshine is a powerfully personal work that explores Taylor’s feelings of grief and sorrow that she will not be able to bring into being the third child she had always hoped for. Prepared from composite images of the artist’s son and daughter, this work is a lovingly rendered portrait of an imagined child framed within a golden celestial circle. A poignant symbol of infinity, the circle also has a bountiful plethora of other associations: wombs, eggs, human cells, spaces, cavities, emptiness. The child’s perfectly formed youthful face is juxtaposed with adult hands that end in broken fingernails; the work is a beautiful monument to this child, the idea of whom will always be cherished.
The Year Zero series depicts key moments from Taylor’s own journey that, though personal, offer narratives which are profoundly shared human experiences: the revealing of a hidden internal hunger for more, the impossible weight of judgement and the deep feeling of loss for an unrealised dream. Through creating these works, Taylor leans into a certain truth: that by casting our darkness into the light it is exorcised and loses its hold over us, granting us the empowerment we need to begin anew.
1 Artist notes on Year Zero, December 2023
Caitlin Eyre is a curator and writer based in Tarntanya Adelaide. She is the Curator and Exhibitions Manager at JamFactory and leads a small team in the development of exhibitions focused on contemporary Australian craft and design. Caitlin has also served as the Exhibitions and Community Arts Coordinator at the Pepper Street Arts Centre. She has undertaken curatorial internships at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and Galleri Heike Arndt, Berlin, as well as an editorial arts writing internship at Berlin Art Link, Berlin. Caitlin has written texts for exhibitions, publications and online platforms. Caitlin is a graduate of the University of Adelaide and her qualifications include a Master of Arts, Studies in Art History, Master of Arts (Curatorial and Museum Studies), Graduate Diploma in Art History and a Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology and History). Her personal research interests are centred on ceramics and jewellery, with a particular focus on mourning and sentimental jewellery (especially hairwork), folk crafts and women’s craft practices.