Talking To: Jessica-Tayler Cain

It was a massive pleasure to get to know visual artist Jessica-Tayler Cain over video chat recently, and to discover more about their eye-popping, Manga-tinged assault-on-the-senses digital art and it’s origins and influences. As one of the south-west’s emerging new talents, since graduating from Bath University in 2017 they have fully rooted themselves in the local Bristol art scene, and they hope to hang around a bit longer making their mark.

Jessica-Tayler grew up in a small town near the Lake District in Cumbria. Feeling ‘like a big fish in a little pond’ they chose to move away for university, and chose Bath due to the fine art degree there not forcing you into a narrow route of choosing your media-weapon early on and sticking to it, and ‘wanting to try everything’.

Jessica-Tayler moved naturally towards sculpture during the three years studying there, but also explored working digitally, submitting a video dissertation. Their current work has segued naturally from the notions of sensory pleasure through sculpture, to now exploring consumerism and sensory overload through digital mediums.

When did you first discover your interest in art?

I have been into art as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I wanted to make comic books and I was just drawing constantly. When I went into 6th form I couldn’t decide if I was going to do physics or art. I ended up dropping out of my other subjects because of my mental health and just did art, then went on to do an art foundation. I think it was always something I wanted to do, but I think I felt pressured not to because of the idea of what artists ‘do’ and what kind of career choices they have. I think there is a lot of pressure from schools to conform to an idea of a career choice early on; within the arts that is especially difficult.

Your current work is heavily digital - what other mediums do you work in and what keeps you excited about using the mediums you do work in?

I would typically call myself a sculptor, casting and making moulds, and that is what I wanted to go into after university. Then because my work was so influenced by digital culture, and I was making films and digital images when I was still at uni, that went alongside my sculptures and installations…. being outside of uni, having no materials, having no space, that pushed me more into the digital realm.

So I do class myself more as a digital artist now, with sculpture on the side. But the thing I like about sculpture is that I like physically feeling and making. The work I was making at uni was informed by this idea of pleasure, like objects of desire, products of pleasure. So I was thinking about consumer culture and how this transferred into a physical object that would give me or the viewer some kind of satisfaction. Which is why the digital pieces went beside them so well, almost like an advertisement. And it’s not even an advertisement for the object I have made, it is more of an abstract advertisement I have made for my practice.

It’s not like a physical object, you can’t touch it, you can’t explore it as a thing, which is one of the key senses we use for exploring our universes. The visuals for me are important and have to be even more impacting, so I think it is this barrier, this difference, between the digital work and the sculptures, that are hitting you hard with the sight, and then hitting you hard with the feeling.

What would you say are the politics and ideas behind your work?

I like to see other people’s perspectives of my work, rather than my own. I think it is more important to me to see how it makes someone else feel. And that can be various feelings, from uncomfortable to this feeling of potentially loving something; visually loving it and being interested in it, and getting absorbed in it.

I am interested in the overproduction of information. And I guess my politics behind it is that I don’t like consumerism… we are so stuck, in this culture, it is very difficult for people to stray from the norm. I am not trying to promote it (consumerism), I am trying to get people to view it in a different way. Even though they are already being overloaded with it. And maybe opening people’s eyes to things they haven’t seen before, to trigger a new thought process.

When I see your work I think of sensory overload, and a naivety to the images….

That is exactly what I want, without being too explicit about it at the same time. It's almost like subliminal messaging through advertising, but as an artwork.

So what is next?

I was planning to apply for a masters, but that is on hold now because I don’t think I want to do it in Bristol, I want to do it in Manchester, and I don’t think I am ready to leave Bristol yet. Bristol is almost like a bubble, this weird little bubble. It’s like everyone here is on the same page, you meet a lot of people who have similar belief systems to you, and it’s like we are all in this together.

I am currently in the process of creating a virtual space for artists to hold residencies, exhibitions, critiques, along with skill sharing and to connect with and support each other. That is what I found quite hard after I left uni, not having a studio, not having the hustle and bustle and people around, so that’s the plan for this year.

What art, written work and music are inspiring you at the moment?

I read a lot of manga and comic books, and in terms of research writing; I haven’t really been reading any, as I am influenced by everything around me at the moment. With this sensory overload like you said, there is this constant imagery everywhere, we are always scrolling, and that is really informing the work, sometimes more than what someone has said critically.

Music wise, when I was at university I did a video dissertation, and that completely changed my practise. I don’t feel that confident writing, so it made me explore a part of my practice that I hadn’t really got into fully. So I was looking at if and how consumerism could be reflected in performance art; I was looking at every bit of it. I am not really into a lot of pop music, or chart music, but I listened to a lot of Justin Bieber, and all of these dance music songs that were in the charts at the time, and added little snippets into the video. Obviously because it is the most widely consumed, it is more prevalent to everyone rather than specific genres.

So you are spending a lot of time immersing yourself in popular culture?

Yes, and I guess with music, like everything, recently I have been listening to a lot of powerful female singers, but current, like Doja Cat, and Nicki Minaj; they are pushing themselves, I like passion in people, I like seeing people who are not stuck in a binary idea of how to be an artist.

On the subject of strong females - do you identify as female? And if so, are you finding it okay being a female in the art world?

I identify as non-binary, but, I guess, gender does come into it. I think it’s about this expectation of what it means to be someone, and how you are represented, and how you want to represent yourself and how people view you. I think it is difficult to break through those boundaries other than what society has already put in place, and that is what I try to do really.

Find out more about Jessica-Tayler, their work, and what is coming next here or on Instagram.

You can find Jessica-Tayler’s video work here on Vimeo.