About Artist Selected Artworks Exhibitions

About Artist

Sally Taylor’s drawings affirm a desire to understand more about human relationships, specifically her relationship and interaction with others. They are equally about creating a balance between formal concerns in relation to the communication of emotional resonance. Using found materials, recently old papers from her childhood home, enables the superimposition of marks in relation to the personal history of the surface. Geometric shapes become ‘blockages’ or ‘openings’ – spaces to breathe, obstacles, portals or toys. The drawings grapple with the intention to remain ‘open’ and not ‘withdraw’, and the intensely worked graphite is a means to connect more purposefully with a surface in order to unravel and understand this.

In ‘Imagined environments, Jigsaw box’ the mouths escape the head, they are part of another narrative, one instigated by a found object from the artist’s childhood.

‘My late mother always encouraged my sister and I to make things. It was that affirmation of the value of making that began my creative journey. She passed away when I was only a child and the passage below from The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit resonates accordingly.’ ST

“The moment when mortality, ephemerality, uncertainty, suffering, or the possibility of change arrives can split a life in two. Facts and ideas we might have heard a thousand times assume a vivid, urgent, felt reality. We knew them then, but they matter now. They are like guests that suddenly speak up and make demands upon us; sometimes they appear as guides, sometimes they just wreck what came before or shove us out the door. We answer them, when we answer, with how we lead our lives. Sometimes what begins as bad news prompts the true path of a life, a disruptive visitor that might be thanked only later. Most of us don’t change until we have to, and crisis is often what obliges us to do so. Crises are often resolved only through a new identity and new purpose, whether it’s that of a nation or a single human being.”
Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby, Granta Books, 2013 (p107-108)

Taylor was born in Yorkshire, where she has returned to live an work with her young family. Selected exhibitions and wards include 2016,That Head,That Head, Rabley Gallery, Sketch Drawing Prize 2005,2008,2013; Confused Heads,Duckett and Jeffreys,NorthYorkshire (2013), All Say The Same, Ryedale Folk Museum, North Yorkshire(2011), Marks and Mouths, PS2, MIMA (2010-11); Drawing Paper #6, Liverpool Biennial (2012), Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017 (prizewinner) 2011, 2009, 2004.

Selected Artworks

Exhibitions

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017
Some Spaces Left, Platform A, Middlesbrough

2016
That Head, That Head, Rabley Drawing Centre, Wiltshire

2013
Confused Heads, Duckett and Jeffreys Gallery, Malton, North Yorkshire

2011
Sally Taylor, Bar Lane Gallery, York
All Say the Same, Ryedale Folk Museum, North Yorkshire
Marks and Mouths, PS2, MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

2010
Mouths with Triangles, Duckett and Jeffreys Gallery, North Yorkshire

2009
aaa, The Bowery, Leeds, West Yorkshire
Raising Voices, South Bank Arts Centre, BCA Gallery, Bedfordshire
What (Not)To Say, Portsmouth Cathedral, Hampshire

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2020
The Far Away Nearby, Rabley Gallery, Wiltshire
Art Happens Here, Crescent Arts, Scarborough, North Yorkshire
London Art Fair – Rabley Gallery

2019
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2019, London (and UK tour)
Fully Awake, Freelands Foundation, London
AHH (Art happens Here: Studio Collective), Ryedale Folk Museum, North Yorkshire
London Original Print Fair 2019, Rabley Gallery, Royal Academy, London
Group Drawing, Drawing Projects UK, Trowbridge, Wiltshire

2018
London Art Fair 2019, Rabley Gallery, London

2017
SelfScapes, Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017, Jerwood Space, London (and UK tour)
Distant Duo, Staithes Studios Gallery, Staithes, North Yorkshire
State of Line: A Survey of Contemporary Drawing, Artworks, Halifax, West Yorkshire
London Art Fair 2017, Rabley Contemporary, London

2016
Ink Art Fair, Miami, USA
To Draw is to be Human, Residency at Drawing Projects UK, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
To Draw is to be Human, 20:21, Scunthorpe
London Art Fair 2016, Rabley Contemporary, London

2015
To Draw is to be Human, South Square Gallery, Bradford, Crescent Arts, Scarborough
Beyond Perception, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Sketchbook Today, Rabley Contemporary, University of Northampton
London Art Fair 2015, Rabley Contemporary, London
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014, Jerwood Space, London, ‘HIGHLY COMMENDED’

Publications

SelfScapes, Dalby Forest, Forestry Commission and York St John University, 2020
Trinity Buoy Wharf 2019 Catalogue
Sally Taylor Head Drawings, Catalogue
(ISBN:978-1-5272-1595-5)
Including essays by Professor Anita Taylor (Jerwood Drawing Prize) and Dr Vanessa Corby (York St John
University and ‘In Conversation’ with Kate Brindley (Head of Exhibitions, Chatsworth House)
State of Line: A Survey of Contemporary Drawing, Artworks, Halifax
Prison Drawing Project, Scarborough
To Draw is to be Human, Publication
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2014 Catalogue
Derwent Art Prize 2014 Catalogue
Paint Like You Mean it, Interview 11, Edinburgh
Sketch 2013, Rabley Contemporary Drawing Centre, Wiltshire
Drawing Paper #6, Co-curated by Gavin Delahunty, Tate Liverpool to
coincide with Liverpool Biennial 2012
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2011 Catalogue
Sally Taylor Drawings, Catalogue, published by Duckett & Jeffreys Gallery
(ISBN: 978-0-9565590-5-0)
Including interview with Gavin Delahunty – Head of Exhibitions and Displays,
Tate Liverpool & Essay by Vanessa Corby – Senior Lecturer in Theory, History
and Practice of Fine Art at York St John University
Milton Keynes Painting Prize 2009 Catalogue
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2009Catalogue
Visual, Arts & Business, Arts Council England Catalogue
Tips and Picks, New York Arts Magazine
Snapshot, a-n Magazine, May 2007
Jerwood Drawing Prize 2004 Catalogue