Bronwyn Taylor

Christchurch based sculptor Bronwyn Taylor is best-known for her bronze casting work. From Kaituna to Kaitorete will instead feature recent drawings and sculptural objects in an experimental investigation into drawing both as a tool and as a practice in its own right. Charcoal is an important substance for Taylor, who makes her own charcoal on her property in the Kaituna Valley outside of Christchurch and it features heavily here. Inspiration for the exhibition is Taylor’s interest and passion for the natural landscape and geology of her home and surrounds on the Banks Peninsula.

Drawing has long played an important role in Taylor’s work as a sculptor and this exhibition will feature drawing in two and three dimensions: charcoal drawings on paper and sculptural objects made of charcoal and wax on the gallery floor. The result is an exhibition that poses a question to the viewer: how does drawing sit in relation to sculptural objects?

According to art historian Barbara Garrie, in From Kaituna to Kaitorete “there remains a constant tension between the work as object and as image. Taylor’s works on paper can also be approached in terms of this tension. As a kind of drawing installation, this exhibition foregrounds the very ‘objectness’ of the artist’s charcoal drawings in their physical relation to other works in the show. Yet, these drawings are of course also inevitably read in terms of their rendering as two-dimensional images. Within the frame of each image, Taylor plays with pictorial strategies of depth and perspective, creating abstract invocations of the landscape that might best be described as ‘spatial constructions’. Often making use of compositional systems involving lines and grids, these works relate to the processes of mapping out and demarcating the land, as well as the practice of image-making itself.”