This suite of watercolour paintings demonstrate Taylor’s continued engagement with the medium as an intrinsic part of her studio practice. Employing a cunning and economical use of space, Taylor divides up small surface areas in various different ways. They play with composition, orientation and utilise a range of shapes that sometimes recall landscapes and sometimes bodies. Taylor leans into the specific nature of watercolours and the ways that large areas of painted colour are irregular and uneven, betraying the way pigments mixed with water are manipulated by the brush before pooling and drying.

Born 1985, Whangarei (NZ). Lives and works in Auckland (NZ)

Imogen Taylor is known for creating geometrical abstractions that engage and play with the forms and legacies of European Modernism. Though Taylor draws from the abstracted forms and coloured juxtapositions of Cubism, Fauvism, and Russian Constructivism, her paintings are stripped of the masculine self-seriousness that saturates the source material. Instead, in their vibrant interplay of thickly applied colour and contrasts between imposing parallel lines and soft curves, the work is joyful, sincere, and pleasurable.

Taylor graduated in 2007 from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and in 2010 gained a Post-Graduate Diploma of Fine Arts. Significant solo exhibitions include: Murmurs, Michael Lett 3 East St, Auckland (2023); Quiet Motel, Whangārei Art Museum, Whangārei (2022); Sapphic Fragments, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, Dunedin (2020);  Pocket Histories, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland (2018); Social Studies, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (2019) and BODY LANGUAGE, Artspace, Auckland (2015). In 2019 Taylor was the recipient of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and in 2017 she was artist in residence at McCahon house.

The monograph IMOGEN TAYLOR was published by Michael Lett in April 2022.