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MELLONY TAPER
b. London, UK “I collect, curate and intervene in the status of discarded things, exploring heritability of experience and life chances through a reimagination and curation of found objects. They become reluctantly received heirlooms, domestic relics: items with a vague or lost provenance. My works most often feel like unnoticed acts of remembrance, penance or protest, a quiet subversion: cuckoos in the nest. They are imposters: incomplete records and imperfect navigations of fragmented, revisionist histories; hints of lives. Drawn to lost and broken things, I hoard the unremarked and unrecorded. My work unearths and retells narratives that span generations, class and circumstance.” — Mellony Taper, 2026
BIOGRAPHY
Mellony Taper is a British artist with a cross-disciplinary practice that centres around the collection, assemblage and curation of found objects, and spans photography, sculpture and moving image. Her work traverses a line between traditional and new media: a halting dance between the future and the past. Taper’s work has been exhibited widely across the UK and is regularly selected for prize exhibitions. Her work is included in ProCreate Project’s living archive of work by artist-mothers and formed part of the 2023 series of ProCreate Public Activations across London. In 2023 Taper was invited to create work for the exhibition “Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City” curated by Turner Prize-winner and cultural activist Lubaina Himid CBE, during its tenure at the Royal West of England Academy. The exhibition - all women artists - included works by invited Bristol-based artists alongside works from the Arts Council Collection. Taper has been affiliated with the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) via its elective Artist Network since 2019. In 2025 she won the Thelma Hulbert Open Art Prize for her work ‘Trousseau”. Her 2026 solo show at Thelma Hulbert runs from 16th May - 27th June 2026. |
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