In Borrowed Time, Taylor presents a series of new paintings and collages, layering images drawn from her collection of printed ephemera spanning various histories across nature and culture. The title refers both to the urgency of the times we live in, seen through the ruptured images of plants and organic forms, and also plays on the working methods of picture appropriation. Taken from botanical guides, tapestry patterns, colouring books, graph papers and engraved illustrations, Taylor oscillates between analogue, mechanical and digital strategies of scanning, cropping, printing and assembling as a way of reconstructing history. An ongoing concern with ruination and things falling apart is echoed in the process of ‘un-painting’- exposing the swaying between decision and indecision.

The paintings become a kind of archival archaeology, dissolving of past and present temporal boundaries, reflecting the atemporality or poly-temporality which marks our contemporary condition. The narrative rupture of the past, as experienced in the many revivals which haunt the present, is translated through the re-presenting or material presence of the past which sometimes reappear as fragments. Through processes of re-materialisation, assembling digital and mechanical print technologies with traditional handcraft processes, within the realm of painting, Taylor seeks to create new meanings appropriate to this current hyper-complex temporal multiplicity. 

Images: Andy Keate

Taylor completed a practice-based PhD with the William Morris Gallery, at Sheffield Hallam University, in 2023. She graduated in 2010 from the Slade School of Fine Art with an M.F.A in Painting. Recent solo shows include A Ghost for Today, William Morris Gallery, London (2022); Phantom Yarns, Artseen Contemporary, Nicosia, Cyprus, (2021) which travelled to the Cyprus High Commission gallery, London (2022), Can we Hold on?, (solo) at CCA, Mallorca (2018-19).

Recent group shows (2023) include Stable, Bobinska Brownlee New River; A Painting Show, Benjamin Parsons at Hannah Payne Gallery, Oxford; Montage, Fabrik Baterswil, Switzerland; Oh, tell me where your freedom lies- you'd rather cry, I'd rather fly, postROOM Gallery, London.

In 2019 Taylor was selected as a finalist in Contemporary British Painting Prize. In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Dazed X Converse Emerging Artist Prize.

PV Thursday 18 April 6-8pm at 36 Great Pulteney Street W1F 9NS

Part of the At Home in Soho programme at 36 Great Pulteney Street Room 1 Borrowed Time: Diana Taylor Room 2 Stop - Repeat: Jost Munster & Jacob Wolff

Diana Taylor in conversation with Rosalind Davis: Saturday 1st June 3pm, all welcome