Taylor Steel (b.1999) is an Australian artist living and working on Gadigal land. Working within an expanded print and photo-based practice, she examines decay and disorder in the marginal, abandoned and overgrown spaces that exist in the gaps and peripheries of urban landscapes.

 

Images of decay in Steel’s work depict glimpses of residual and ambiguous urban space such as vacant land, unkempt wastelands or a simple crack in the pavement. These spaces, whether large or small, act as ghostly refuges distanced from the frenzied routines of the everyday and existing outside of the productive structures of the city, disrupting the idea of progress and development in their state of disorder. Decay and disorder is most often depicted in her work through weeds – surviving in the most hostile places, never welcome yet always present.

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The use of analogue and digital copying and distortion processes allow for an approach to decay not only as a subject encountered in the field, but also as a methodology – enabling a departure from the indexical and mimetic photograph to the abstracted and degraded image. In Steel’s studio practice, this occurs through material experimentation with reflective substrates and methods such as screenprinting, scanning, layering, and image transferring, which transform and degrade the imagery, distancing it from traditional representation. This disruption reflects not only the disorder of the spaces themselves but also a sense of detachment, a personal experience mirrored in the process.

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In 2022 she graduated from the National Art School with an MFA majoring in printmaking. She was awarded the Bird Holcomb Master of Fine Art Scholarship in 2020 which assisted her practice during the course of her postgraduate studies. 

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