Jennifer Taylor:
https://www.situations.org.uk/projects/situations-awards-2021/
Jennifer Taylor works with live performance, film and sculpture to explore ritualistic behaviour, systems of control and post human possibilities. By merging notions of a mystical ancient past with sci-fi fantasies of an imagined distant future, she creates absurd narratives with ambiguous fictional realities. For her anarchic live events, groups of performers join her to re-enact ancient fertility festivals and obscure make-believe ceremonies within illuminated, colourful stage-sets. Make-shift paper caves, mirrored pyramids and rubble-filled rooms become alluring trashy wonderlands, inhabited by performers adorned in elaborate theatrical costumes. These are made from an eclectic array of low-tech found materials, shiny novelty ephemera and malfunctioning technologies, together with bizarre sculpted props with bemusing ceremonial functions. Epic tales of humanity are then retold as deranged school-play pantomimes that challenge the logic of all the convoluted symbiotic systems, power structures and repetitive rituals of our existence.