Bud is one of a series of works painted by Imogen Taylor while staying a friend’s bach in Naseby in Central Otago, where she arrived in 2020 after a six-month award residency in New York was abruptly cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic. Maintaining familiar processes and a kind of asymmetrical equilibrium, she employed art historical quotations – nods to cubism, Bauhaus and modernism – to deliver a knowing twist. Bodily references reflect a kind of activism: Bud ostensibly refers to stonefruit of the Central Otago region, but also performs as code for something possibly more sexual.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )