Taylah Kelly is a visual artist currently studying at the Victorian College of the Arts, undertaking an Honours degree having completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Kelly’s work examines the discomfort in beauty and finding contentment in her own neurosis.

The exhibited videos are part of the larger work, Artificial Beauty 2018, a multimedia installation conceived by Kelly for her graduation presentation. Artificial Beauty explores how we are constantly pressured to become our artificial perfect self through a continuous stream of information and advertisements. Kelly explains, wanting to create videos which are “creepy and uneasy advertisements that weirdly attract you by referencing the artificialness of the beauty/health industry”. The sheer volume of information drowns us daily with targeted advertisements causing emotional suffering through self-consciousness and isolation; Kelly explores the over the top advertising tropes used frequently by the health and beauty industry. Expressing her vulnerabilities, Kelly utilises overly saturated colours in correlation to stylized installations to convey an intimacy with anxiety. The jarring, seductive palette calls attention and arouses desires comparable to advertising. Taylah Kelly’s work finds unrealistic comfort in the over dramatized and strange artificiality within the beauty world.