All material on this website is (c) copyright Andrew Taylor 2006
News
7th February 2007
From now on, news will be posted on the following links: myspace and my blog
10th October 2006
The gene culture exhibition opens today. For further information see the poster below.
Andrew Taylor will be reading at Edge Hill University's Learning Resource Centre between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday 11th October with other members of the Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Research Group.
25th September 2006
New venue and details for the geneculture exhibition:
13th September 2006
After the enforced enclosure of the geneculture exhibition in August, the exhibition will be now part of the Liverpool Biennial. Further news soon.
2nd August 2006
Andrew Taylor has poetry exhibited at an upcoming exhibition at the Eggspace Gallery in Liverpool from 9th August - 27th August. See details below.
gene Culture
Curator Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney
Exhibition: 9 August – 27 August 2006
Private View: Wednesday 9 August 2006
7.00 pm onwards.
Artists: Jonathan Aldous, Sigal Avni, Jan Bennett, Ken Byers, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti, Kim Fielding, June Kingsbury, Carrie Reichardt, Andrew Taylor and Kai-Oi Jay Yung.
Egg
Space Gallery (Headspace)
16-18 Newington Building
Newington
Liverpool
Merseyside
L1 4ED
England
e: info@eggspace.org or headspaceegg@aol.com
w: www.eggspace.org
In association with Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, Transvoyeur and Headspace.
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The Exhibition ... Gene Culture
The theme of the exhibition is set on the contemporary concepts of gene culture in post modern society. The objectives of the exhibition are to provide creative and cultural insight to the current debates of genetics and the artistic dialogue expressed through a range of medias.
The exhibition is to present art that explores the purpose, function and rationale of genetic intervention and as expressed by artists who represent the changes in societal concepts by their cultural interpretations and expression. To consider the shifts and transitions and how such interventions and parameters change by the ethical, legislative, and aesthetic measures in history, theory, philosophy and practice and explored through the diverse creaive media. The art will present visualisations embodied through the artists creativity to denote the current trends and issues of intervention in the genome culture.
The Curator ... Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney
Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney is a performance artist and graduate of Liverpool John Moores University, England, in 2002. She is currently on her doctorate and researching the body within contemporary arts, science an culture. Her art explores the temporality and spatiality of body politics within the post modern environment and institutional structures.
She has performed and exhibited in an array of international events, such as the Liverpool Biennial, Venice Biennial, Performance Art Festival (US), Hong Kong Biennial and Berlin Kunst Salon. Her art is strongly founded on the canon and philosophy within the context of live performance interventions, as well as considering new and innovative modes of expression modified through digital technology and optical engineering. Other projects and commissions have been in London, New York, Paris, Copenhagen and many other places.
Although she pursues her independent practice in performance art, she is a strong advocate of contemporary art practice, creating projects for exchange and dialogue in the concepts and philosophies of post modern art and society. To collaborate and share to realise new and diverse modes of thinking and creative expression in the international arts market.
She is also founder and Projects Co-ordinator of Gesquoi and Transvoyeur UK, both research and management programmes in arts and culture within the international market. She was also one of the original founders of the Whores of Babylon Arts Collective (UK).
She is currently researching the subject of genetics and part of this exhibition forms her analysis of the insight and expression of the artist, as cultural commentators in their different practices, modes of expression and philosophies.
The Artists ...
Jonathan Aldous
The art created by Aldous attempts to subvert the notions or aspects of everyday life that are often overlooked. He presents familiar objects or images in humourous or unexpected ways, where seemingly bizarre or whimsical ideas often allude to a cruel and threatening world.
Aldous uses and explore the cliches and paradoxes involved with the rituals of the everyday. He is interested in images and how, like many words they can have several meanings as in puns. With a starting point in the imagery of popular culture he tries to find subversive or inquisitive ways of interpreting the visual language of the everyday world. He often utilizes humour in his work as a means of increasing feelings of threat and hysteria; it is never clear who or what the humour is aimed at and at whose expense.
As an artist, he often work across a variety of media and enjoys the freedom of not being tied down to one particular aspect. Although the work may be a painstaking drawing, perhaps a whimsical collage or assemblage, he hopes that the same ideas and feeling permeate throughout the artwork.
His work is sometimes deceptively simple, alluding to more cryptic or implied political meanings, he feels it is important that a single meaning is not dictated to an audience, as it is important for viewers to participate and interact with my work.
The images presented in 'Gene Culture' are part of an ongoing project. These are inspired and loosely based on the novel,, The Island of Doctor Moreau by H G Wells. In which a scientist experiments with vivisecting animals, so that they adopt human appearance and traits. This results in a menagerie of disturbing and horrific visions, where the scientist can never achieve his divine vision. The story is also an allegory to the presence of the beast within and man’s savage past, where given a lack of the laws that keep us civilized we too could revert to the wild.
Aldous feels that many of the ideas presented within the book are still very relevant in the present day, although the novel itself was written at the turn of the last century with debate around vivisection, genetics and ethics. He has begun a body of work exploring these ideas, initially working with extensive drawings in the attempt to visualise the human-animal hybrids featured in the book. Exploring grafting human features onto animals and vice-versa. Hopefully, the final pieces will have a combination of humourous and also disturbing attributes.
He works across a variety of media, encompassing drawing, collage, printmaking and sculpture. He lives and works in London and Norwich.
Sigal Avni
Avni, a London and Tel Aviv based artist, studied photography at the Romat Hasharon State College of Art, in Israel. She also received her M.A. in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins School of Art, in London.
The photographer´s work is held in several important collections such as: The Tel Aviv Museum The Museum of Israeli Arts and Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv. Avni's works have been exhibited at numerous galleries across Europe and Israel, including: Spitz Gallery, London (2001); 198 Gallery, London (2000); Watershed, Bristol (1998); Heike Curtze Gallery, Vienna, Austria (1999) and Wolfson College, Oxford (1995).
Her photographic works have also formed part of numerous book and magazine publications. Avni is represented by IRIS - International Center for Women in Photography. In 1988, Avni received the Young Photographer Prize at the Second Israeli Photography Biennale.
Avni uses the art of illusion to create images that challenge our perceptions of the human body. At first site grotesque, the people she creates depict states of mind and emotion. Her photographs are moving references to human existence.
Jan Bennett and Kim Fielding (Hydrart)
'Creature' by :Hydrart
Since June 2004, multi media artist Jan Bennett and Kim Feilding have been collaborating as :HYDRART. To conceive and raise a hybrid human Creature, a synthesis of the potential misappropriation of biogenic technology and the homunculus of alchemic desire. This ‘being’ was developed with the support of Cywaith Cymru – Artworks Wales, the University of Glamorgan and Art and Business Cymru, Gage Ceramics and Designs Dental Laboratories. It was exhibited as a live art event and installation at Elastic Residence, Whitechapel, London May 2005, as well as Chapter Arts Centre’s House, Cardiff last November.
The intention was to direct a performance of a prosthetically altered subject and to produce artwork with a strong affective content. ‘Creature’ experiment; created and contained in a completely dark environment and controlled by short, intense bursts of light. The creators and controllers were what Virilio describes ‘pitiless’. His use of this terms to mean inhuman o lacking humanity infers a critique of super-rationalists ideals which have historically given rise to eugenic or genocidal practices, the Germans who sought in their death camps to perfect the technique of disappearing the physical body, denying the reality of soul and mind as aspects of embodiment.
Virilio asserts that some contemporary art is pitless by virtue of its convergence with technology without critical insight into the uses to which it might be put, and as such, is complicit in the destruction of the aesthetics of disappearance (‘pitiful’ art on other hand embraces the unity of bodies the aesthetic holistic appearance}. For Virilio, biological science is not merely pitiless, it is an ‘Extreme art[s], such transgenic practices, aim at nothing less than to embark BIOLOGY on the road to a kind of ‘expressionism’, whereby teratology will not longer be content just to study malformations, but will resolutely set off in quest of their chimeric reproduction’.
Ken Byers
Byers studied Fine Art & psychology BA in Liverpool 1980. Studied MA Fine Art at University of Northumbria 1990, BA in History of the Visual Arts in The Modern Period 1997, & MA in Media Production (TV & Video) University of Sunderland, 2005.
He has exhibited in an array of events nationally and internationally: Experimental Films MA Film Screening. University of Sunderland 2005; 7th International De Poesia Visual. Sonora I, Experimental; Visual Vortice; Argentina (2004); ‘Dualism’, Galeria Domenico Li Mudi, Trapani, Sicily (2004); ‘DidgeMonde’ Art & Technology, Orleans House Gallery, London (2003); Matrix International. Sacramento, Califoria, USA (2001); Innerspaces International, Innerspaces Multi-media, Poznan, Poland (2000); Dialogues 4th International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Aorta Gallery, Chisinau, Moldova (2000); LeVal Gallery. Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia (2000); Manege. Central Exhibition Hall, St. Petersburg, Russia (1999.); Les Oreades Gallery, Moscow, Russia (1999).
His work with digital multi-media, including film, moving image, experimental sound. Directed and produced hsi own films and which are art/metaphysical and which include actors, structural animations, experimental sound.
The work includes a dialectical relationship between the methexis of collective cultural consciousness and conditioning and expresses other modes of being that lay deeper in the subconscious. Interactive structures involve the relationships and conflicts between a material wealth, beauty, security, and immaterial wealth, beauty, security. It explores ‘inner-movements’ of the human state, and inner visions of deeper aspects of the human condition. The movement forms the language and expression of ossicillating states of mind, psyche and spirit, signifiers of the human state. Dynamic tensions in the structure represent states of mind in transition and resistance. The forces inherent in the work are intrinsic and extrinsic and form the conflicting dynamics in the work. Quasi-technological machine-form, and architectonic structures symbolize the human form. The structural machine forms, reticulating reflexive forms, question and expand the ‘difference’, ‘individuality’, and emphasise the differences of human individuality via the transvergence between technology and the human condition and or states.
Sarawut Chutiwongpeti
Chutiwongpeti graduated from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Chulalongkorn University in 1996. Since graduation, Chutiwongpeti has been working as a media artist with Cyber Lab at the Center of Academic Resources, Chulalongkorn University. He has worked in the realm of contemporary art and interested in revealing the unexplored facets of experience. In 1998-2006, Chutiwongpeti secured funding and traveled as a visiting artist/researcher to several countries such as: Canada, the United States of America, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Singapore and Japan.
Chutiwongpeti have already made some contribution to the development of the media arts through his artistic and research practice, and related international activity at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), ImaginAsia Project, Smithsonian Institution (The Freer Gallery of Art and The Arthur M.Sackler Gallery, United State of America), ZKM Project, (Institute for Visual Media, Germany), Designskolen; Biennial Theatre Festival -Sight 'n Vision, Nordic Theatre Union (Denmark), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; Waseda University; Kobe University of Design (Japan), Central European University (Hungary), International Cultural Centre Jeunesses Musicales Croatia Groznjan (Croatia), The TOU SCENE Contemporary Centre of Art; The Nordland Kunst 0g Filmskole; The Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre; The Kunstakademiet Trondheim (Norway), Luleå Winter Biennial; The Beeoff/Splintermind; The Ricklundgården and The Royal University College of Fine Arts (Sweden), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, The Pro Artibus Foundation and Art Centre Saksala ArtRadius (Finland), Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea and Drodesera>Centrale fies (Italy), MAAP-Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Designing Your Future, Berlinale Talent Campus 2005, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Germany) and Biennale Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2005, Arts Center, Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt).
June Kingsbury
Kingsbury graduated in BA (Hons) Ceramics and Glass, Buckinghamshire University College in 1998. More recently completed a MA in Ceramics and Glass at the same university.
What began as a study of animals killed on the road, led to a further investigation into the genetic makeup, the territories and the propensity for an animal, in this instance the grey squirrel to infect the red with a virus that left the original host unaffected. The grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis has also been linked to infecting the human with cjd.
In some areas the genetic makeup of the red squirrel Sciuris vulgaris has remained constant until the planting of new woodland created corridors to link different the different populations of the squirrel.
The territory of the indigenous red squirrel has been usurped by the grey, and more recently has been further compromised by a virus which is carried by the grey. To protect the Scottish red squirrel, a mass cull in excess of the original planned cull has been suggested.
In colour blind a road kill grey squirrel has been cast in red glass. The bones are revealed within the space the animal once occupied.
Carrie Reichardt
‘Pinky and Perky’.
Reichardt made the sculpture partly as a critique of the absurdities of the fashion industry and celebrity breast enlargement, but also as an exterior “in your face” reminder of our use of pig parts on the inside – the abuse of animals as food and for spare part internal organs.
Half human, half animal beings are the stuff of ancient mythology, but future science may make commercial body changing as common as choosing a fashion outfit.
While wearing animal body part goes back to shamanic and hunting rituals, apart from keeping warm with skin and fur our unhealthy western lifestyle creates diseases which we seem to accept as a by product of the way we are told to live. We use animals for medical research supposedly because they are like us – but not enough like us to worry about the moral issues.
In the near future “body fascism” will intensify as plastic surgery becomes cheaper and easier. On the outside we will be able to change our physical identity on a regular basis while our internal body mechanisms will be modified for easier quick replacement of diseased or aged organs.
Future elites will buy body parts for longevity. Internal organs grown in labs from cloned animal/human hybrids alongside cyborgian enhancements and computer/mind link implants, for health, work and pleasure.
We will be recreating ourselves in many optional forms dictated by fashion, to survive on our own messed up planet or other worlds. Maybe we will have inbuilt defences to battle against the “lesser humans” who cannot afford to “improve” themselves. In the end we will be choosing our evolution as a species.
Andrew Taylor
Taylor is the author of three collections of poetry and has previously been poet in residence at Liverpool Architecture and Design Trust and Liverpool Cathedral. He is currently completing a PhD in Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University.
Taylor's interests are formally of the city and the urban space, in particular the spaces that are unseen or hidden. The work presented in the 'Gene Culture' is an attempt to interact with people visiting the exhibition, by granting permission and inviting them to alter the meaning and form of the poem presented. This is achieved by visitors contributing to the poem.
The text presented, consists of found material and text sourced from cut-ups of Taylor's own published poetry.
The cut-up was brought to prominence by William S Burroughs after Brion Gysin's innovative experiments. To quote Burroughs, 'Cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation. Images shift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound sound to kinesthetic. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.'
It is Taylor's intention for the text produced during the exhibition to be published in erbacce poetry magazine, which he co-edits. Should no text be produced during the exhibition, Taylor will further cut-up the poetry displayed and submit for publication (andrewtaylorpoetry.com and erbacce.com).
Kai-Oi Jay Yung
As British born Chinese, her series of 'doodles’, and 'blobs' begin with the cell, transposing its genetic make up onto the infrastructure of ecosystems or governmental hierarchies. Crossing video, sculpture, drawing and painting, her cacophony of exuberant work investigates the tension between two identities; being British and Chinese. As opposites of chaos versus order; She lures the viewer beyond crass hi-glossy living of surface logic to the mutative underbelly; congealing all matter into attraction-repulsion of life itself. Each work expulses/exposes the making process, arriving at the sublime surreal; eradicating logical categorization.
The anthropomorphic plaster 'blobs' are hybrid sculptural DNA mutants, urging her animated collage doodles into three dimension. These doodle-collages are the raw footage of my experience expressed on paper. Her eclectic video works are playful sonic assaults, extending visceral lines, text and shapes into new ways of engaging with moving image. Highly laboured, in glorious techni-colour, the site specific video installations often use of her body to explore jouissance and endurance.
From exhibitions at Intermedia, Glasgow, Ganghut, Melbourne to Maryland,
USA and The Whitechapel Gallery, London, she is set to embark on my Cove
Park residency, invited by Graham Fagen. Commissioned to blog for A-N,
and has also featured as June’s Future Forecast. Clive Gilman, FACT
designer, Liverpool, Dundee Contemporary Arts, director, nominated her
for the Professional Artist Development Scheme, Manchester Chinese Arts
Centre, for which she was selected as one of the UK’s emerging artists.
Awards include The William Armstrong Davidson Prize and Alan Woods
Memorial.
23rd June 2006
erbacce # 7 OUT NOW special editor's choice by Alan Corkish and Andrew Taylor. Includes poetry by Ashley Welch, Carol Fenlon, JJ Steinfeld, Rupert M Loydell, Matt Fallaize, Ursula Hurley, Tamara Fulcher amongst others. You can purchase the magazine, priced £2.00 at News From Nowhere, Bold Street, LIverpool and Linghams, Banks Road, West Kirby. For Mail Order details visit the erbacce website here
21st May 2006
3RD ANNUAL DORA DOYLE POETRY EVENING.
FEATURING GUEST POET
TO BE HELD ON
TUESDAY 6TH JUNE 2006
7.30 PM
ORMSKIRK COMMUNITY CENTRE, CHAPEL STREET ORMSKIRK
ENTRY CHARGE £1. FREE GLASS OF WINE.
Open session in the second half if you wish to bring your own poetry to read.
For further information contact Carol Fenlon 01695 728320 or email Carol@fenlonh.freeserve.co.uk
3rd May 2006
Andrew Taylor will be reading at the OWLS Annual Meeting and Poetry evening on the 6th June. All welcome. Details to follow.
28th March 2006
I've posted an old poem 'For Ivor Cutler' on the homepage to mark his passing. I met Ivor in London and he was a thorough gentleman. Rest in Peace.
16th March 2006
Sorry for lack of updates. Work has been progressing on my PhD and only a few poems have been written. Click here to view a new poem
21st October 2005
erbacce # 5 is out, edited by Andrew Taylor and Alan Corkish erbacce.com
28th September
on-line picture of Robert Sheppard, Andrew Taylor and Cliff Yates here
27th September
A link here to an on-line poem published in Neon Highway. Cathedral Poems is now stocked in Liverpool Cathedral's SPCK bookshop
11th August
A poem, GESQUOI POEM Part II, has been published in Mercy magazine click here to read
10th August 2005
Cathedral Poems (ISBN 0-9543621-9-5) is out now. In stock at Linghams West Kirby and Heswall. Further stockists to be announced soon.
19th July 2005
Cathedral Poems has finally gone to print. Paula Brown Publishing have announced that the book will be available from August.
21st June 2005
two poems (englyns), Like Stars our Warmth Fades Away and Desire and Sadness published in Haiku Scotland edition # 2
21st April
Poems Published
Andrew Taylor has 2 poems published in Orbis #132, Spring 2005 edition: Little Be Cold and Like It Knows Exactly
20th April
erbacce # 3
erbacce # 3 has been published. Available in Liverpool from News from Nowhere in Bold Street, and in West Kirby, Wirral at Linghams Booksellers, Banks Road. This edition contains poetry from AD Winans, Scott Thurston, Ursula Hurley, Pat Brodie and contains an interview with Sam Smith. Cover price is £2. erbacce is also available from erbacce.com
Poetry Readings
Andrew Taylor has two confirmed readings in April.
Thursday, April 7th 2005 Linghams Booksellers, 248 Telegraph Road, Heswall, Wirral, CH60 7SG. Information from the Linghams website:
POETRY EVENINGS
On the first Thursday of every month (except August) we host Wirral's
most popular poetry evening, called 'First Thursday'. The programme
includes poets reading their own works, poem of the month, a
presentation on a major writer or theme, live music and 'open book' a
chance to read one of your own poems.
The coffee bar is open for evening meals and a glass of wine beforehand;
the poetry starts at 7.30pm.
All welcome - £3 admission.
Contact us
if you would like to know the evening programme in advance.
Sunday,
April 10th 2005 The Walker Art Gallery, William Brown Street,
Liverpool L3 8EL. Neon
Highway Presents: 2.30pm - 4.00pm A reading by Allen
Fisher. Other poets scheduled to read are Andrew Taylor, Robert
Sheppard, Scott Thurston, Angela Keaton, Dee McMahon, Matt Fallaize and
Colin Harris
7th February 2005
Award
The People's Poet Award 2004
Andrew Taylor won The People's Poet Award for 2004 at the Everyman Bistro on Saturday. A book of poems will follow, to be published by Paula Brown Publishing. Thank you to all those who took the time to vote. Click here for more information
2nd February 2005
Reading
Reading In Liverpool
Andrew Taylor will be reading at the launch of The People's Poet III Anthology and The People's Poet Winter Journal, at the Everyman Bistro in Liverpool on Saturday 5th February at 8.00pm
25th January 2005
Reading
Reading in Wirral
Andrew Taylor has been invited to read at First Thursday at Linghams Booksellers in Heswall, Wirral on April 7th. More details nearer the time.
23rd December 04
New Year, New Publication
Cathedral Poems
Publisher Paula Brown has confirmed that Cathedral Poems, the collection written while poet-in-residence at Liverpool Cathedral, has finally gone to proof. It will be published early in the New Year.
21st December 04
New Publication
Poetry & Skin Cream
A new collection of poetry was published today. A limited number of 50 have been distributed to friends of erbacce magazine.
Oct 18th 04
Collaboration
Poetry & Design
An exciting collaboration between Andrew Taylor and graphic designer James Scott has been announced. Andrew and James will work on imagery and poetry to be posted (hopefully) daily at www.fotolog.net/taylorfallows the first of these collaborations can be seen here: http://www.fotolog.net/taylorfallows/?photo_id=8583980
Oct 9th 04
The first erbacce press chapbook announced
Poetry & Skin Cream
A special limited edition publication will be given away to friends of erbacce, towards the end of the year.
Sept 28th 04
Poetry on the radio
BBC Radio Merseyside 95.8 FM
One of Andrew Taylor's poems will be read on the Roger Philips Show's First Friday on BBC Radio Merseyside on Friday 1st November.
Sept 28th 04
Two more readings announced
Edge Hill Readings
In addition to the Cathedral Poems reading at Hope University College on 7th October, Andrew Taylor will be reading selections from the forthcoming book at Edge Hill College in Ormskirk on Thursday 21st October, as part of the college's National Poetry Day celebrations and on Thursday 28th October, when he will be appearing with Robert Sheppard and Cliff Yates as support to Allen Fisher.
Sept 22nd 04
Poetry Published
Two poems published on-line
Two of Andrew Taylor's previously unpublished poems, Untitled # 9 Liverpool, London, Paris and the flight was a little turbulent, have been published on the Caught In The Net Webzine, edition 21.
Sept 21st 04
Cathedral Poems
Publication date of Cathedral Poems announced
Cathedral Poems, Andrew Taylor's new collection of poetry, written while he was poet-in-residence at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral is being published on 1st November, by Paula Brown Publishing. More details to follow.
Sept 9th 04
A Hope University College Writing Centre Presentation:
Andrew Taylor reads Cathedral Poems
Andrew Taylor will read from his forthcoming collection Cathedral Poems, (Paula Brown Publishing), at Hope University College, Hope Park, Liverpool. (directions here) on National Poetry Day, Thursday 7th October at 7.30 p.m. Wine and nibbles will be served. Open Floor Support.
Free admission.
Sept 10th 04
listening to the birth of crystals
Link to the new People's Poet listening to the birth of crystals page
This link contains details of the book co-edited by Andrew Taylor and Alan Corkish, with photographs of the UK launch and ordering information.