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Simryn Gill

(Singapore, Malaysia, Australia 1959– )

Title
Forest
Year
1996-1998
Media
Photograph
Medium
16 gelatin silver photographs
Dimensions
16 photographs: 120.0 x 95.0cm each; 161.3 x 129.2cm frame
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales Contempo Group 2003
Accession number
32.2003.a-p
Copyright
© Simryn Gill
Location
Not on display
Further information

Through photographs, objects and installations Simryn Gill considers how we experience a sense of place and how both personal and cultural histories inform our present moment. Her work also suggests how culture becomes naturalised, an almost invisible part of our physical environment.

Gill often works with books, narratives and texts that provide a framework through which we order and describe the world around us. 'Forest', has the appearance of an etymological proposition where Gill quite literally takes printed words back to roots. Not their roots, as in the source of their meaning, but rather the growing, evolving, decaying nature from which the raw material for books is derived. Gill tore up the fibrous matter of book pages and grafted fragile strips of text into the natural environment. Attached to tropical plants, they look like natural forms, becoming exuberant banana florescences, dangling aerial roots on fig trees, mangroves emerging from mudflats, variegations on the leaves of lush tropical foliage and decaying vegetation at the base of epiphytic ferns. The original plant interventions occurred in places where a tamed nature was in the process of becoming wild again, in decrepit gardens and decaying buildings in Malaysia and Singapore. There is something of a 'lost cities' quality to these works, as nature is in the process of reclaiming culture if not civilisation.

Gill's photographic records of her interventions recall botanical drawings and are printed in subtle tones of gray. In keeping with their observational purpose, they depict space up close and there are no vistas, faraway horizons or the distant sublime. They have something of the claustrophophic closeness and rank fecundity of tropical vegetation, which taxed the romantic imaginations of the 19th century. Gill's text has only a brief life out in the landscape as, if it is not eaten by insects, it rapidly rots away under the onslaught of the elements. While we may suspect that culture is impermanent, evolving and probably contingent, we do not really expect such classics as 'Frankenstein, The origin of species or Robinson Crusoe' to become 'cultural compost'. Gill has developed a form of wood-pulp fiction in which she 'literalises the landscape', stories and legends have taken root off the pages of books and grown into a fantastic local flora of transplanted narratives.

Bibliography (10)

Look (Jul 2007), Jill Sykes (Australia) (Editor), 10pm [print management] (Australia), Newtown, New South Wales, Australia.

Contemporary: Art Gallery of New South Wales Contemporary Collection (2006), Anthony Bond (England; Australia) (Commissioning Editor), Wayne Tunnicliffe (New Zealand; Australia) (Commissioning Editor), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874).

Art Gallery of New South Wales Annual Report 2003 (2003), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874) (Author), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Look (Dec 2003-Jan 2004), Jill Sykes (Australia) (Editor), 10pm [print management] (Australia), Newtown, New South Wales, Australia.

Simryn Gill: selected works (2002), Wayne Tunnicliffe (New Zealand; Australia) (Curator), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Flight patterns (2000), Cornelia H. Butler (Author), Francis Pound (Author), Lee Weng Choy (Author), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (United States of America), Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

Beyond the Future, the Third Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1999), Queensland Art Gallery (Australia, estab. 1895) (Author), Queensland Art Gallery (Australia, estab. 1895), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Simryn Gill (1999), The Organisation for Visual Arts (England), The Organisation for Visual Arts (England), London, England.

Art Asia Pacific [no.16] (1997), Editor Unknown (Editor).

Art &Text (no.56) (1997), Editor Unknown (Editor), Visual Arts Board, Australia Council (Australia).

Exhibition history (2)

Unscripted, (20 May 2005–24 Jul 2005), at Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Art Gallery Rd Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2000.

Simryn Gill: selected works, (27 Jul 2002–22 Sep 2002), at Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Art Gallery Rd Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2000.