forms follows (dis)function

May 3 – June 4, 2016

Opening reception Saturday, May 6, 2-5pm

Peggy Taylor Reid has a lens-based practice concerned with the recording of everyday objects. A fascination for the human obsession towards organizing and cataloguing underscores her work, yielding photographs that have evolved to address the index and typological systems. form follows (dis)function, refers to the principle ‘form follows function’ connected to Modernist architecture and industrial design of the 20^th century. The subject matter emerges from her concern with current food and waste economies, referring to an industry of recycling born from a culture of convenience and obsolescence.

While collapsing boxes for trash and recycling Taylor Reid became interested in their physical form and ingenuity of construction. The containers reveal their formalist-like structures after they are de-constructed, retaining traces of their original function often through the presence of stains and torn edges. The social and political implications of the objects are reflected: waste, over-abundance, expediency, and a culture of disposable products. By integrating elements of humour and irony the work goes beyond the purely formal. Taylor Reid’s exploration incites a phenomenological enquiry into the core of our humanity, exposing images that are poetic in their awareness of the hidden complexity of items and elements in the world.