STEIDL-WERK No. 24: “Collisions” explores the creative influences and personal friendship between artists Rose Wylie and Fraser Taylor, and is a mixed-media survey of their careers to date. Designed by Theseus Chan, Creative Director of WORK Pte Ltd and WERK Magazine, the book archives an intense three-day experiment with Wylie and Taylor working simultaneously and led by curator Alison Harley. In response to Wylie and Taylor’s extensive creative practice, artists Jimmy Cosgrove, Jeff Gibbons, Ian Massey, Jo Melvin and Liam Scully were invited by Harley to create open forms of writing that Theseus then integrated into the book as text collages.
Central to this collaboration are notions of commonality and difference, as well as Wylie and Taylor’s emphasis on graphic materiality and spontaneity: Taylor is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in drawings that move between figuration and abstraction, while Wylie declares: “Draw what you see, or remember; use everything at your disposal … including ‘sparkle’, wandering wispy lines for ghosts, soft zigzags for heat (and steam), and cross-hatching, foreshortening … use what you’ve got.” Documentary photos by Oona Brown also round off the book and transport us to the original site of Wylie and Taylor’s “Collisions”.