Summerhall is delighted to present “Scapes” by artist Suzanne Taylor. The show is a retrospective body of work covering the last several years. It brings together painting, collage, screen printing and photography.
Her subject matter is diverse and ranges from uncanny images shot in the old Royal Infirmary Edinburgh, where a mysterious naked beauty parades the corridors of the dilapidated building. The striking image of the young woman is in stark contrast with the broken-down interior of the infamous historicRoyal hospital. Taylor also brings us beautiful painted realism in the form of vintage objects as part of a still life series. The objects pique our interest and make the viewer question the subplot. For example in the painting, “Your Call” we see a gun next to a rotary dial telephone. What’s it doing there? Are we the protagonist to make the call or take the gun? We find ourselves in the active role of deciding the next move.
Her collages are palimpsests: layers of meaning created from an extensive collection of thousands of images. The series, “A Beautiful Life” juxtaposes detailed anatomical skulls with original typographic titles from Penquin books printed during the 1930’s and 40’s. In another collage, we see a young diver from the 1940’s diving from a federal prison euthanasia bed. Taylor combines and disrupts images to enlist a second, third and fourth read, leaving us questioning the scene and begging a discourse long after we leave the exhibition.
Taylor constantly strives for modes of expression regardless of medium to make visual for us the landscape of her inner thoughts and to bring us a sense of the uncanny. To make us reflect. Like that of her greatest influences, from Richter to Rauschenberg, she refuses to be pigeonholed into a singular category. The show aptly titled “Scapes” is a journey through the many cognitive scapes and genres of expression.
