Previous Exhibitions

Ken Taylor

Scaffolding

25th May - 13th July 2008

All the photographs in the show have been taken since August last year when I bought a little digital camera that is small enough to always have with me.

Scaffolding I see as an interesting vernacular architecture of the contemporary city. It keeps popping up all over the place; these massive structures akin to medieval buildings. They are not designed by ‘design professionals’ but are ‘crafted’ by people that do ‘stuff’. This week I saw a scaffold where the zebra crossings orange beacon had been carefully exposed by some unknown scaffolding ‘craftsman’ in the most amazing manner. In this sense scaffoldings directness is as refreshing as the qualities of vernacular architecture that I enjoy. These are borne out of the way that people have responded to the specifics of their time, place, topography, gravity, weather, material, use requirements, light, safety, social hierarchies, politics etc. The beauty of scaffolding is that it responds to the same things but without the big weight of cultural meaning on its shoulders. Although it is very much ‘there’ in our cities we do not tend to notice it. It is a ‘supporting’ structure that facilitates other events. Maybe its just ‘out there’ and it should not be objectified into a photograph but by photographing scaffolding it does record the idea that the Irish curator and critic Declan McGonagle puts forward that ‘Art is a verb not a noun’. The kind of art that evidences a process tends to be that which draws me in.

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