INSTIGATE : EXCHANGE decennium Ebony Andrews & Ian C. Taylor

An exhibition of collaborative artworks by Ebony Andrews & Ian Taylor

INSTIGATE : EXCHANGE is built around a simple idea: one artist starts something, the other responds. This exhibition marks ten years since the project began and celebrates a return to Waterstreet Gallery with reflections on how the process has evolved over the past decade.

The concept does exactly what the title suggests. Each piece begins when one artist presents the other with a found object (objet trouvé). The object is then passed back and forth between them - often many times - with additions, alterations and interventions made at each stage. Much of this happens independently and without discussion, allowing each artist to respond freely to what the other has done.

A brown swing label attached to each work records who first instigated it and how many exchanges it has undergone. These labels form part of the finished pieces, documenting their journey and making visible the process of exchange, negotiation and shared authorship that defines the project.

Through INSTIGATE : EXCHANGE, Andrews and Taylor deliberately loosen the control artists usually have over their work. Rather than following a fixed plan, they create the conditions for something to emerge through process and chance.

One of the few rules established at the start of the project concerns completion: a work is only finished when both artists agree it is finished. Equally, works can be declared ‘failures’ by mutual agreement. INSTIGATE : EXCHANGE  raises questions about authorship, value and artistic intention. It also playfully challenges traditional ideas about artistic authority while inviting viewers to reconsider how objects gain significance.

Over the past decade Andrews and Taylor have produced a body of hybrid and experimental works in which their different aesthetic sensibilities sometimes align and sometimes compete. The resulting pieces draw on everything from totems and fetishes to kitsch souvenirs, thrift-store curiosities and comedic gestures toward ‘high art’. This exhibition marks a Decennium of exchange - an ongoing conversation shaped by chance and the unexpected.