Peggy Taylor Reid form follows (dis)function

Peggy Taylor Reid’s lens-based practice is concerned with recording everyday objects. A fascination for the human obsession toward organizing and cataloguing underscores her work, yielding photographs that address the index and typological systems. form follows (dis)function refers to the modernist principle “form follows function,” and emerges from Taylor Reid’s concern with present-day 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 forms and ingenuity of construction. After they are deconstructed, the containers reveal their formalist-like structures, while stains and torn edges provide traces of their original function. Social and political implications of waste, overabundance, expediency, and a culture of disposable products are all reflected in these objects. By integrating elements of humour and irony, the work goes beyond the purely formal. Taylor Reid’s phenomenological exploration exposes images that are poetic in their awareness of the hidden complexity of items and elements in the world.