Writing And Difference

Alternative histories of colonialism, narratives of location and dislocation and the secret lives of objects are explored with astuteness by Simryn Gill in her photographs and installations, reveals Gary Carsley.

SIMRYN GILL'S PRACTICE CONSISTS primarily of objects and photographs brought to life by a number of small, meditative gestures like cutting, tearing and casting. The disparate facets of Gill's work are so tenderly interwoven and the relationships between them are of such delicate, sequential complexity that it becomes impossible to accurately evoke a sense of her art by referring to one aspect in isolation from the others. What one encounters in her work is a world-view mapped with a kind of ethical compass whose points are not geographical salients - north, south, east or west - but are curiosity, humour, generosity and modesty. In an art world brimming with overproduced spectacles, ostentation and outsourcing, Gill's work is singular for its intellectual and material sensitivity.

 

The origins of Gill's art lie unsurprisingly in the alluvium of personal experience. She was born in Singapore of Indian parents and raised in the diasporic environments of England and Malaysia. She subsequently married and initially led the type of peripatetic life characteristic of academics before settling to live and work between Sydney, Australia and Port Dickson, Malaysia. There is the long-term habit Gill has of collecting and collating disparate objects which provides her with both a primary resource (the materials used in the process of art-making) and a framework for making sense of the often unsettling relationships between them. Gill's archival instinct and aptitude for display - qualities essential to any committed gatherer - can be detected in a work such as Silver (1991), composed of hundreds of odd and old silver-plated cutlery items arranged in a spiral on the floor.