Emilie Taylor’s brand new exhibition, Edgelands, has opened at Gallery Oldham.
In this new body of work, she explores the lives of the young women who exist on the edge of society, and on the edge of womanhood. They live between the urban and the rural, between childhood and adulthood, which she describes as the ‘Edgelands’.
Emilie has previously worked in frontline mental health and drug services for ten years and is acutely aware of the stories which go unheard.
The young women depicted in this exhibition are ordinary young women doing the things which ordinary young women do – things that Emilie and her friends did in their youth.
In the tale of Persephone and Demeter goddesses become mortal, but the classical forms of Emilie’s ceramics seem to elevate the lives of mortals to the same level of interest as goddesses.
Maggie Kufeldt, Executive Director of Health and Wellbeing said: “Emilie has recently been tipped by the Contemporary Art Society as an artist to watch and we are thrilled that she has agreed to develop an exhibition with us at this stage of her career. There are some stunning pieces in the exhibition, which are all for sale.”
The theme of fertility also runs through the exhibition in a number of ways – in the story of Demeter the goddess of harvest and fertility and her daughter Persephone, in the fields of corn on the ceramics, traditionally used to decorate harvest jugs, and not least because during the two year preparations for this exhibition Emilie became a mother herself.
