Tayler Fisher
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Interview by David John Scarborough
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Published in September 2024
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A Quieter Place by Tayler Fisher. Installation view at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones
The title of your solo show that you've done with us, A Quieter Place, is originally inspired by a song by the Paragons called The Quiet Place. The singer sings from the perspective of someone who's living next door to a noisy neighbour. He wants to find a sense of peace. He wants to take his family and find a quiet place. I thought we could start by talking about your childhood home. What were the things that were around you when you were growing up?
We're quite a tight-knit family and still are a tight-knit family. We still spend a lot of time with each other, that's always been a very important thing. Both my parents were quite interested in the arts, pop culture stuff and films. My Dad has always had a side business that included retro and vintage. Things would be pointed out to me, such as the film Jason and the Argonauts. The Ray Harryhausen animation is impeccable. People are still trying to copy it now. Music's always been an important thing. We're a household that had speakers set up and Dad still listened to records when everybody was moving to CDs. I was a little bit older when I started to get all of the reggae and dub influences. We had tapes made that were played in the car. I went to a couple of gigs when I was a bit too young to go. I would say that, from 16 up, I started to go to stuff when I could. Later on, I started travelling here, there and everywhere to different sound systems.
Gilgameshes by Tayler Fisher at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones
I was reflecting on the show that you put together, which has this kind of quiet politics to it. And I feel like in the show you present a version of England which is mystic, multicultural and expansive. Are you aware of the interplay between politics and practice?
It is something I think about. I keep referring to this line of "you need to find your quieter place" and that is sort of the point of it. The way I was always trying to explain it was, that it's not a definitive endpoint, this perfect idyllic endpoint. It's quieter. It's something you can build towards, something you can reach for.
There's a lot of consideration around architecture, maps, and map-making. Loughborough itself has a collage of architecture. The brutalism of Towers, the faux Roman architecture of Garendon Park. What initially drew you to the maps and architecture of Loughborough?
One influence was a recreation of an 1837 map of Loughborough. On that map, there were a couple of really interesting locations, one of which was Dark Hole Yard. A little bit of a loose narrative span out of that, where real locations were blended with unreal things.
Dark Hole Yard by Tayler Fisher at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones
The exhibition presents itself as a series of vistas along the path of the hero's journey. Let's talk about the first view. You come in and are presented with a painted brick wall, installed with two collages. On the left, we've got Dark Hole Yard, a cave-like entranceway, and on the right, the unfurling heads of the hydra. Both images are vortex moments.
When I saw Dark Hole Yard on the 1837 map, my head immediately went to the sort of place that you might find in a video game, like, Final Fantasy or Witcher, where you come across a cave or an opening, and it's this decision of, do you go in? What could be in there? And usually, there's a big reward for going on this extra journey. The Hydra plays into the Golden Fleece reference points, which was another location on the 1837 map. The Golden Fleece was a pub at one point, or a tavern. The Hydra features in Jason & The Argonauts. The idea of a Hydra, which is a many-headed beast, is that if you cut one of its heads off, two more grow in its place. If you were trying to go to the Dark Hole Yard to get your reward, you might have to face the beast first.
As you pass through the archway, not only do the visuals change but the audio changes as you move from the crackle and the hiss of radio static into deep bass rumbles. What are we listening to as we make that journey?
The first work is the Quieter Place Missing Channel, which is an audio version of the collage that is in the rest of the show. It's recordings on a dictaphone; video game soundtracks, film soundtracks, things that suggest other places or a sense of travelling or being elsewhere. Mixed in with that are the locations that I've recorded them in, my studio, and my home. It's packaged as if somebody's just happened upon this radio channel that's putting out the sounds of the quieter places. The second work is called Inna Dark Hole Yard. Anybody that is into their reggae and their dub will know that probably the most important dub album is 'King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown', which is essentially a set of versions of tunes with Augustus Pablo and Jacob Miller. And the Rockers, who are the band. So for this concept, I essentially took that rhythm, which is used for the title track of the album, 'Meets Rockers Uptown'. I take that, extrapolate it, extend it, put it through EQs and reverbs and echoes. I got a few different iterations and then played around with this process of a maxi dub, taking it to the nth degree. It eventually results in something which acts like an extended soundtrack for the space.
Quieter Place Version by Tayler Fisher at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones
Once you step through that archway, you enter a quieter place. Wildflowers are dispersed across paintings, alongside hope-filled lyrics and words. There's a sense of paradise, some green, fair land. But there are also weapons symbolising a fight. You're presented with Gilgamesh, a defender-warrior, with a bow and arrow, alongside a ritualised sword. Do you see those two things as oppositional or is that somehow integrated in the space?
For me, they go hand in hand. The starting point for the inclusion of weapons is William Blake's, And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times, which is now referred to as 'Jerusalem'. And in that, he refers to a sword that shall not sleep by his side, and he says to bring him his bow, his spear, and he says that you will not cease from mental fight. The weapons become symbols of powering forward as, opposed to, symbols of war.
I recently read Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking by Tyson Yunkaporta. In the book, Tyson metaphorically journeys through Dante's circles of hell. In the real world, he yarns with and learns from fellow Indigenous folk. He makes weapons and tools that hold story and narrative, keys for understanding his place in the world. That way of working resonated in my head with the work you've produced. Not story purely as escapism, but story as a way of placemaking, grounding you in a reality and family and community. Does that feel true of the work for you?
Yes, I think so. I've tried to describe the show before as ultra-local and hyper-fantasy. I've made a Sword of Awakening that's clearly from an unreal world.
My Guiding Red by Tayler Fisher at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones
What is that for you? Is an awakening part of every artist's journey?
I can only speak for myself. And I wouldn't want to get too drawn into thinking of things in an absolute way because I think that's what the show is trying not to do. I think you can have many awakenings. The point is that you're meant to continue. Another idea that is repeated is the phrase, "Forward Ever, Backward Never".
Dub culture is referenced quite heavily in the landscape painting that you get at the back of the gallery, with Waterhouse and Firehouse, which in the painting are the Tower of Babylon and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Something that I'd written down that I'd noticed on a record was Firehouse. It's another King Tubby record, Rockers Meets King Tubby in a Fire House. Firehouse and Waterhouse were names for King Tubby's studios and record labels. It's paying homage to those things. At some point I'd written down, Firehouse, Waterhouse, because it seemed to resonate with what I'd already done with some works where I was thinking of a sun and a moon; these dualistic things where they're working, in tandem, together, apart, together. And then it was, again, doing this process of taking these names of something real, then making it unreal and fusing a whole narrative with it, extrapolating it, seeing what a Firehouse or a Waterhouse could be. In the process of making, these things become their own myth and their own larger-than-life thing.
A Quieter Place by Tayler Fisher. Installation view at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones
Although the origin story of the Tower of Babel doesn't necessarily affect where we end up, there's a lot of resonance in that story, in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's a story of a city of people taking things into their own hands to become god-like, or it could be seen as trying to build a utopia. They build the tallest tower on the planet. As a result, God curses them and they change from a monoculture, all speaking one language, to speaking multiple languages and not being able to understand one another. I think if you flip that with your ideology, it's not a curse but a blessing. It's people discovering unique cultures. It's the breakdown of the absolute. It's variety, it's versioning, it's dubbing.
And this is why the wildflowers are scattered throughout. It's letting the flowers grow between the cracks, wherever they can, mixing, pollinating, blending.
For me, the parting shot, the goodbye moment, is Green Man's Well. It's a chance to pause, reflect, and make a wish. It's also a versioning of the pagan roots of the Green Man, combined with figures from the universes of Star Wars, Marvel, Power Rangers, and Pokemon. Can we talk specifically about what that moment means to you, that moment of making a wish, casting a coin in the water?
Beneath Modern Painters, New Decorators, in Carillon Court Shopping Centre, there was a pub called Green Man. Another way of referring to a pub is a watering hole. That's how we come to Green Man's Well. I've made these coins. They're from my quieter place. They're to give to you. It's your choice whether you keep it and it's a memento of the show, or you can spend it, cast a wish to the well. I don't believe that chucking a coin into a well is gonna grant any wishes, but I don't think that's the point. It's the act of doing it. It doesn't matter what the endpoint is in some senses. It's this step forward. If you're making a wish you are looking forward. And also there's the wider context of, we are leaving these studios soon for a new building. Giving the Green Man a coin is, a little bit of a, see you later, to the space as well.
A Quieter Place by Tayler Fisher. Installation view at Modern Painters, New Decorators 2024. Photo by Joshua Jones.
Have you made a wish in the well?
Not yet.
What will you wish for?
I can't tell you that.
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A Quieter Place is an exhibition at Modern Painters, New Decorators, Loughborough, and runs between 31 August – 19 October 2024
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︎ @tayler_fisher
taylerfisher.com
︎ @davidjohnscarborough
︎ @mpndprojects
modernpaintersnewdecorators.co.uk
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If you like this why not read our interview with Dion Kitson.
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