Brendon Taylor, Beaten #1, 2023. Epoxy resin, acrylic, graphite and brass, edition of 8, 10 x 31 x 9cm. Courtesy: the artist and Tacit Art, Melbourne.

Man has constantly extended his capacity to make through the evolution of tools. In Brendon Taylor’s latest exhibition, he visits a memory, a memory of tools belonging to his grandfather and father. He looks to replicas and found versions of like-tools to replace those that have been lost over time.

But Fading Tools is not an exhibition founded in nostalgia. Taylor is an artist constantly reinventing the use and application of tools to further the creative experience. The small, handcrafted sculptures have now become more of a memory. The once solid object that was used to carve a new object or to fix a broken table or to build a home is now rendered with a transparent epoxy resin partially painted.

The rendered, painterly finish perfectly captures in detail the realism of the grain of a wooden-handled hammer or markings of the centimetre or inch of a ruler. But the exposed, transparent resin of the object references the lack of information or its fading that memories hold. Transparency is also reminiscent of light shining through a pane of glass or the open door of a barn or work shed. In eliminating part of the object, a level of intrigue and romance is piqued, resulting in the questioning of the structure of the object.

These works trigger thoughts, making us consider what was, what is and what will be. At a time when everything is so developed, so refined and so microscopic in technology with microchips and AI, the foundation tools of it all have barely changed. A hammer still looks fundamentally like a hammer. The functionality of objects worked so well: the legacy of time proved that only small evolutions were required in the way we build and the way we’ve always built. But what is next? What will become the new tools of tomorrow – and will these tools, like the title of this exhibition suggests, fade along with our memories. They will no longer be present in our toolboxes. Or maybe the toolboxes won’t be there either.

Taylor allows us to celebrate and enjoy the memory and connectivity to the activity of those from the past and the tools that they used.

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