Saturday 22 November, 11am
VENUE: Messums London

Join Michelle Franklin, the wife of the late sculptor Brian Taylor for an introductory talk on his work as an exhibition marking 90 years since his birth opens at Messums London. Michelle will be joined in discussion by curator Wilfrid Wright and Johnny Messum. Michele is an artist and the wife of Brian Taylor. A former pupil of Taylor’s at Camberwell College of Art (1977-81), she married Brian in 1988. Michele was also one of Taylor’s primary models, alongside their children, Belle, Dashiell and Gabriel.

The Brian Taylor exhibition ‘Anguish’ centres around Taylor’s series of ‘Anguished Heads’ (1968-71), created between 1963 and 1971, exploring the artist’s engagement with the concept of anguish and the work of European artists and writers of the fin de siecle for whom anguish was a similarly important theme, such as Auguste Rodin, Medardo Rosso, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Best known for his sculptural portraits of humans and animals, Taylor married meticulous measurements with his free and expressive handling of clay to develop an oeuvre of highly emotionally charged sculptures in clay, cement, marble and bronze, uncannily infused with the life-force of their subjects.