You were wondering I think, how long would it take for the garden snail you trod on once to travel a mile. You know, if it had lived, if you had been more aware of the surroundings and those single footed, moisture seeking beings, to travel a mile. Well, if it didn’t stop, just kept on going, it would make the distance in around 33 hours. You won’t watch it happen, of that, I am sure.

 

I wasn’t thinking about that, more about scale and vision, different vision from eyes moving independently on stalks, well that’s what I’m telling you now. The eyes are on tentacles, can they see in two directions, get two lots of info and process that? I do understand that the lenses developed over millennia are weak and cannot focus what is a monochrome view for them. Further to this the whole body is covered in light sensitive cells that can detect light and shade and movement. It can see a frog or you, but when the frog jumps the snail’s eye-brain process is slow, so for a while the frog has vanished, gone, doesn’t exist (for the snail). So, they might not see your shoe coming down on them, blissfully unaware.

 

Let’s change direction, just a breath’s distance, here in the place that is just an imagining as I write, will be things. Things bought together, crafted, hung up, stuck down and held for a moment before moving on. Art objects, printed matter, book works, a cabinet of once migratory entities (insects), surfaces blackened by flames and presented just so, totems. What might be called natural objects, snail shells, historical butterfly specimens, saplings as well as diagrams related to natural processes and sci-fi navigation systems that cannot help but tangle up with current thinking about ecosystems, geographies and politics. This supposes an interest in this collection of artefacts by Finlay Taylor but you should understand that artists do not operate in a vacuum, so there are inset in the gallery works by Finlay’s family members who have influenced and shaped his thinking alongside a borrowed image by Rembrandt, his only still life etching ‘The Shell’.

 

This all adds up to a cauldron of measurements and gauges, tests to see the condition of a moment, what ifs and an idea of how buoyant or ruinous a situation may be.

 

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Finlay Taylor’s work explores natural phenomena and landscape, often engaging with specific sites and species. Finlay attended Exeter College of Art, Croydon College of Art & Design and Wimbledon School of Art, where his formal art training focused on print media and book art. He has exhibited widely and his work can be found collections including: Tate Britain, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Yale Centre for British Art, USA; Oxford Brookes University, UK; University of the West of England, UK; Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK; Duncan Jordanstone Book Art Archive, UK, and the British Library.

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