Opening 6pm Wednesday 23 Nov

In a world of visual excess, this slow journey through paint reassesses the consumable objects that comprise our contemporary cultural makeup. Abandoned rubbish, half eaten junk food and curious food constructions all quietly consider notions of beauty, excess and personal identity.

Artist Nathan Taylor uses hyper-realistic painting to explore and decode a visually saturated world. Viewers will find themselves lost in the exquisitely rendered surface of a crushed beer can, an abandoned doughnut, or a heavenly confection.

Decoding Visual Excess surveys Taylor’s practice of the past three years, bringing together the largest number of his works exhibited at once to date.

Taylor’s work is characterised by an ongoing, obsessive fascination for realism and paint. The artworks in this exhibition examine how painting can be used to explore ongoing social anxieties of environment, sustainability, waste, consumption and health, including an evaluation on the persuasive role of the photograph in an increasingly digital world.

The works in Decoding Visual Excess explores the seduction of illusion within reality through their hyper-realistic style. By re-contextualising familiar aspects of the everyday, Taylor invites us to contemplate ideas of unattainable perfection, artifice and fantasy.

In the vast sea of visual information that we encounter every day, these paintings offer to help restore our faith in the real.

About the Artist:

Since his first major solo exhibition in 2003, Taylor has exhibited both nationally and internationally, participating in multiple facets of the visual arts scene including curated group exhibitions, art prizes, artist talk as well as being awarded notable grants, private commissions and scholarships.

Alongside winning the Eutick Still Life Award in 2012, Nathan has been a finalist in numerous national prizes curated by regional galleries, including Geelong Gallery, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery and the Perth Centre for Photography.  Taylor is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania.

Image: Nathan Taylor, More than welcome, 2012, Acrylic on board, 40 x 80cm

This project has been assisted by the University of Tasmania

Exhibition Catalogue: