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A mon seul desir: the tapestry paintings; solo exhibition

The first exhibition of the full series of large-format paintings from the ‘A mon seul desir’ series developed from the themes of the six 15th Century tapestries 'La Dame et Licorne', Musée du Moyen-Àges, Paris. The act of transcription involved in making these paintings enabled an exploration of the iconography and meaning of the tapestries, an understanding of the context as source material and related artefacts, and established a potential reading for the central subjects of these enigmatic images. The resultant paintings deal with the senses, sensuality, the notion of a suspended reality, themes of duality, and the simultaneous representation of freedom and imprisonment. In this interpretation, they are linked to the early narrative of Tristan and Yseut (The Romance of Tristan, Béroul). The construction of the paintings combine all of aspects of Taylor’s practice, a sequence of painted and drawn observations from the model, those made using a mirror, and transcriptions and reveries developed from historic images/artefacts. The maquettes for the large paintings and six portrait studies for the central character were also included in the exhibition.

The associated series of 50 ink drawings were exhibited in ‘A mon seul desir, reveries & other series’ at the NAS Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2007) with the accompanying publication including illustrations of the hitherto un-exhibited paintings. Taylor presented the research context and process in several public contexts, including: Utas e-prints (2009); University of the Arts Alumni Magazine (2008). Examination of the related imagery also led to a sequence of paintings developed from one specific image of Marietta and the Unicorn, a 15th century Italian engraving in the British Museum (exhibited, Painting into Drawing into Painting, The Drawing Gallery, 2008). Other dissemination includes other exhibitions, and illustration in Trunk, Volume Two: Blood (Boccalatte Make Books, Sydney 2013).

www.thedrawinggallery.com/

www.arts.ac.uk/media/oldreddotassets/docs/magazine-issue8-web.pdf

eprints.utas.edu.au/9611/

www.bridgemanart.com/search?filter_text=anita+taylor&x=0&y=0

boccalattemakebooks.com/

www.galleries.co.uk/listings/2009/jul-09/fly/Eng-Mid.pdf