Portfolio2
SCULPTURE
Emotional Movements
Exploring rhythm and gesture in non-human form.
Stainless steel mesh, hand-worked using textile tailoring techniques, mounted on bases constructed from found objects and reclaimed domestic items.
INSTALLATION
EMBRACE: The things that unite us, Tyler Moorehead, 2017
Installation of soft form sculptures, hand-tailored from vintage kimonos and filled with bamboo batting and soft foam.
Each ‘emotional icon’ corresponds to emotional responses we bring into relations with other people.
Visitors were invited to breach the 4th gallery wall and touch, squeeze or embrace the pieces incorporating scent, responsive light and sound. Artist-led ‘Embrace Meditations’ were held on the gallery floor.
EMBRACE asked visitors to consider: Has the art of civil discourse been lost? Could the universal language of the embrace step in? What does it mean to embrace something or someone? What might happen if we do?
Photos: Liz Gorman
Meet Me at the Upside Down Table, Tyler Moorehead, 2018
Participatory installation piece inspired by the 1906 text Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzo, used a board game format to practice an ancient master’s encouragement to ‘cherish the unvarnished self’.
The gallery near Southwark Underground station provided an opportunity to engage local residents and workers in the project.
WINNER: Art installation of the year, Design in Mental Health, 2019
Photos: Bernadette Baksa
Welcome to WOOD.LAND. , Tyler Moorehead, 2021
Portraits and soundscapes from the urban woods. The installation changes the face of the archetypal wood walker, with diverse participants photographed wearing protective ‘woodland armour’. as methodology, speculation and meditation.
Drawing on forest ritual and oral traditions, the piece uses experiential research to pre-imagine a warm, woodland welcome not always extended to those from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
Conversations in nature build our capacity to challenge and re-negotiate ‘urban’ narratives which do not include green space.
In the woods, we can bear witness to our collective experience of disenfranchisement in nature. Walking together, we welcome ourselves, and inhabit the urban woods on new terms.
Enveloped by trees and life, we seek to unravel the notion that black and brown bodies are unnatural in the natural world.
Sound collaboration with DJ Raphael Mann
AUDIO: When Great Trees Fall, Hip Hop wood walk mix based on the Maya Angelou poem Feat. voice artist, Debi Tinsley.
AUDIO: Mixes from field recordings of the urban woods, blending the natural percussions of nature in the city with percussive musical accents.
Even on My Knees, Tyler Moorehead, 2019
A participatory installation that memorialises privately shared wishes of visitors, allowing them to submit representative items for inclusion in a growing a shrine-like canopy inspired by the form of Japanese Shinto shrines.
Visitors were invited to write words of encouragement to other visitors and attach it to a vintage tie and ‘weave’ it into a growing tapestry. The tapestry is intentionally started at low level to cause visitors to sit or kneel uncomfortably for a moment of respect to the fellow citizen survivors of life they seek to encourage. The tapestry rises of the floor up to shoulder height to allow people of all abilities to feed in.
Photos: Bernadette Baksa
SOUND & MOVING IMAGE
VIDEO: POLITUS (Refined): What we choose to remember, Tyler Moorehead, 2019 Running time 11:09
Politus is a performative video exploration of patterns of respectability, aspiration and class, through the shadow of domestic artefact.
The artist uses fine crystal, fine linen and foodstuffs to hand to reflect on the reasons why symbols of refinement might be cherished by her mother. In the process of memorialising one symbol of respectability, she defiles another.
Installed at Tate Modern as part of ‘Art on the Air’ opening directly onto the Turbine Hall, POLITUS is a response to Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus fountain and takes its name from Walker’s insight about ‘what we choose to remember’.
Ocean Drifters, Tyler Moorehead & Lucy Papadopoulos, 2019-present
AUDIO: Ocean Drifters excerpt from London Design Biennale ‘Design in an Age of Crisis’ 2021
Ocean Drifters is a live sound experience that uses sonic composition, vibration, live sound capture and embodied learning techniques to stimulate human empathy with microscopic marine life.
Installed at IRCAM 2020 and part of the London Biennale 2021, Ocean Drifters is an immersive provocation and a collective meditation that aims to put empathy at the centre of ecology.
'Rooted', 48.5h x 64.5w x 29d cm, aluminium mesh, reclaimed steel bolts in wood bases, marble fragment, Tyler Moorehead, 2022
‘Signs of life’, 40h x 36w x 32d cm, aluminium wire mesh, latex, acrylic paint, found objects, Tyler Moorehead, 2023
‘Permission to speak’, 120h x 70d, stainless steel mesh, reclaimed wash stand, metal emulsion, Tyler Moorehead, 2023
Gallery hang, SWAY Gallery London
Rough Waves, Tyler Moorehead 2017 - reclaimed vintage kimono silks, vintage cotton, bamboo.
From the Heart, Tyler Moorehead 2016 - reclaimed vintage kimono silks, vintage cotton, bamboo, LED lights, leather cord.
Necessary Conflict, Tyler Moorehead 2016 - reclaimed vintage kimono silks, vintage cotton, bamboo, vintage kimono ties.
Installation at Platform Southwark
Table: Plywood, recycled felt, vegetable tanned leather offcuts, lace teapot covers. Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 50 cm. Benches: Plywood planks straddling bales of antique and vintage table linens stand in for tea house benches. Dimensions: 120 x 40 x 1.8 cms
Demonstration of upside down table in action
upside down leather table leaf and handmade ritual card
Sheer masks x 2 - Sewn and sculpted organza, vegetable dye, Tyler Moorehead, 2020
Portrait of wood walker in protective white leather ruff
Jacqui - leather offcuts, grosgrain ribbon, Tyler Moorehead, 2021
Wood walker in protective red cape made from leather offcuts sculpted and fired. Portraits highlight the urgent links between bio-diversity and cultural diversity.
Menier Gallery. Large scale portraits with soundtrack, 2021
Large scale portraits of diverse wood walkers surround visitors with recordings of walkers’ thoughts, a spoken word playlist and DJ mixes of woodland and urban sounds.
Even on My Knees, Tyler Moorehead, 2018. Dimensions: 2.15m H x 1.5m W x .75mD Bamboo cane, vintage linen teapot covers, antique silk kimono ties, ephemera, acrylic paint, gold leaf, natural clay, waxe
Installation Platform Southwark
Vintage linen teapot covers formed into ‘bells’ frame items, sewn in without description or context. The first 13 selections formed the initial installation, with new bells added to subtly shift the balance of the fragile structure.
Even on my knees (detail), Tyler Moorehead 2018.
An expanding tapestry at the base of the piece is formed as each visitor intermingles their written reflections with those from other visitors. A weaving ritual devised for the project to invite guests to connect with others who’ve shared the experience.
Installation at Tate Modern adjacent to Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus in the Turbine Hall in dialogue with that artist’s work.
Politus (Refined), Tyler Moorehead, 2019. Video 11:09
Video installation at Tate Modern. Politus uses the shadow of cut crystal glasses as a symbol to explore patterns of achievement, acceptability and assimilation among the black middle classes.
Still from Politus (Refined), Tyler Moorehead, 2019
Vintage and antique textiles are a recurrent theme in the artist’s work as artefacts of memory, class, emotional dynamics and social repression.
Ocean Drifters immersive installation setting
Through an embodied experience of ocean sound and vibration, based on imagining a plankton’s point of view, the immersive installation is part of a sequence of meditative and reflective experiences.