Taylor Galleries is proud to present OZIO, a three-person exhibition of new work by Nataly Maier, Janet Mullarney and Helen O'Leary. The show will open with the artists In Conversation from 6pm on Thursday 27 September and the Private View runs from 6-8pm the same evening. OZIO continues from 28 September to 20 October 2018.
OZIO draws on the original Greek meaning of the word rather than the contemporary dictionary and cultural translation from the Italian, "sloth". It is that space that occurs when there is nothing to do but devote oneself totally to following an unknown, for no particular purpose.
For OZIO Nataly Maier has made hundreds of small abstract watercolour paintings. The work, installed around the room like a frieze, documents a specific colour palette on a vast scale, sourced over the years through her many visits to art galleries around Europe studying masterpieces, especially those dating from the Renaissance period. The paintings are made with egg tempera, a medieval technique and also a sign of respect to medieval art.
Janet Mullarney's work encompasses a variety of media, and her sculptures have frequently combined wood, bronze, foam, glass, rubber, papier-mâché, textiles, terracotta, plaster and wax. References to surrealist, religious and mythological iconographies, as well as art history, are everpresent in her work. However for this show, in this present body of work, a change has happened - persuaded by ozio, she has opened up unexpected terrains using particularly apt papers and forms, discovering amygdalae and monte analoghe connecting to a very old sketch done on a very old envelope.
Helen O'Leary knits with wood, bending the painting out of the ruin of its own making. Each piece is cobbled together from the detritus of earlier attempts. The backs of these pieces show the construction and the fronts are cushioned with layers of linen and egg tempera. She constructs the supports in the same way that she makes the 'paintings', using high-brow painting techniques like egg tempera and fresco to coat the supports. Her studio is an archaeological site whose fabric displays the ravages of age, a compendium of erasures, deliberate archaisms, renovations and restorations, each piece commenting on its predecessor.