George Taylor (b.1975), La Bête 1975, 2013

Golden Pheasant feathers on board

137 x 147.5 x 8.5 cm (framed)

Price: £37,500 inc VAT

At the core of George Taylor’s work lies her ongoing investigation into the state of Nirvana reached through the connection of ‘the little death’ of sexual orgasm, or through the act of dying itself. This fleeting moment has been the focus of her spiritual and artistic activity and her elaborate and labour intensive works glisten with sensuality and iridescent beauty.

In recent years, Taylor has used an extensive variety of feathers to create absorbing, large-scale pieces which blend qualities of sculpture, installation and painting. She painstakingly positions each tiny feather, producing a sedimentation of sumptuous layers of colour and depth as the piece develops. Her work is in numerous influential private collections and in 2008 had a major solo exhibition Le Petit Mort at Scream, London.

The dialogue between Taylor’s exotic materials and their more morbid origins adds an intriguing twist to her work.

Strongly influenced by George Bataille’s book Eroticism: Death and Sensuality and his theories on ‘transgressive practice’ Taylor finds inspiration in the connection between religious death ritual and sexual behaviour, to the experience of absorption in artistic practice. It is the sense of losing oneself, ‘being swept away’ as she describes it, that rouses her and which she finds so similar to other forms of spiritual or sexual ecstasy. Taylor’s work also makes reference to the exquisite and charged death shrouds used in Andean rituals between 300 and 600 AD in which feathers were used symbolically to connect with the Gods.

Provenance:
From the Artist

Eilis O’Connell (b.1953), Hapup, 2020

Wood, rubber, jesmonite, cord and paint

242 x 62 x 182 cm

Price: £36,750 Incl. VAT

Eilis O’Connell studied at Crawford School of Art, Cork and Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. She is a Royal Hibernian Academician,  and throughout her career O’Connell has won awards from both the British School at Rome and the Royal Society of Arts and undertaken residencies in both France and Spain.

Many of her works are large scale public commissions, including ‘Reedpod’, a 13.3 metre sculpture in stainless steel and copper commissioned by Howard Holdings for Lapp Square, Cork, and various works for the Cardiff Bay Art Trust, London Docklands and Bristol Docks, including ‘Pero’s Birdge’ installed in 1999. O’Connell uses a variety of media and techniques, from stone and rubber to steel, cord, or feathers, alongside working with cast metal and sewn fabrications.  Her inspirations may come from a wide range of sources including archaeology, architecture or found objects.

O’Connell exhibits widely both in Britain and abroad, and her work is held in public and private collections throughout the world.

Provenance:
From the Artist