About

Sarah Taylor's practice encompasses painting as a process which is equally engaged in investigating the medium as an 'Aspirational' activity, a dedicated pursuit that considers what can and cannot be classified 'as' painting.

Tea towels, ragbag remnants, plastic bags, and printed packaging are some of the items of domestic bric-a-brac that are elevated to a higher status of painting. In the ongoing series, Prior Arrangements these items, 'seen but not looked at, not examined,' 1 are stretched on to frames as approximations of painting. Grouped together and arranged in 'Lots,' as in an auction, the individual works are displayed leaning against the wall & aspire to be presented as painting, the most aristocratic of art forms 2

The work moves between the modest and the monumental, the discarded and the valued, whilst also engaging with themes of class and hierarchical classification.

Sarah Taylor was born in Guildford in 1966, since completing an MA in painting at Chelsea College of Art she was Jr. fellow in painting at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff. She has since taught in various art institutions including, Leeds College of Art, University of Wales Newport & Cardiff, the University of East London & The City and Guilds Art School of London. In 2007 she began a practice led PhD at the University of Ulster, Belfast, supported by a DEL postgraduate scholarship.

Exhibitions include Dirty Knicker Girl, The Gallerette, London, Indivisible at the Southampton City Art Gallery & ART futures- organised by the Contemporary Art Society, London. International exhibitions include, Eye to I - Seeing & Self, Les Brasseur's Gallery, Liege, Belgium, Indivisible, De Belles Arts de Sant Carles, Valencia, Spain; Kind of English, die box, Berlin; Wall of Guilt, Puriuli Agli Scalzi Gallery, Venice, Italy. Past support and funding has been awarded by the British Council, Southern Arts, the Welsh Arts Council, Art Research (Solent University) & the D.D.A.A (Berlin).

Objects Flown is a permanent installation at Heathrow Airport in London, commissioned by The British Airport Authority. 

1R. Ferguson, ed, J. Yau, Famous Paintings Seen and not looked at, not examined. Hand Painted Pop: American Art in Transition: 1955 -62, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, 1993.p.121. 

2 J. Harris, ed, Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism, p.41. 'John Golding once called [painting] "the 'aristocrat" of the art world'It all started when...