SIMRYN GILLGATHERING
Free with Museum Pass
Free entry
The work of Simryn Gill considers questions of place and history, and how they might intersect with personal and collective experience. Born in Singapore in 1959, Gill lives in Sydney and Port Dickson, Malaysia. Using objects, language, and photographs, her work conveys a deep interest in material culture, and in the ways that meaning can transform and translate into different contexts. Through the reinterpretation or alteration of existing objects, the photographing of specific locations, and the forming of collections, Gill contemplates how ideas and meanings are communicated between people, objects, and sites.
Simryn Gill: Gathering explores these ideas through a selection of works from the past five years. The exhibition includes key photographic series such as May 2006 and Run, and the book-based installations Paper Boats and 32 Volumes, as well as Garland, which is comprised of objects collected from beaches in Malaysia and Singapore over almost a decade. Also featured are two recent works, My Own Private Angkor, a suite of photographs taken in Port Dickson, and Untitled (Interiors), bronze sculptures cast from drought cracks in western New South Wales.
The exhibition also aims to reveal Gill’s interest in methods of display, and in the different ways in which people might experience art works. It contains a selection of books, sketches, collections and experimental pieces from the early 1990s to the present, some produced for exhibitions and others never intended as art. Together, they offer an insight into Gill’s artistic processes and her interest in art-making as an active engagement with the world.
An MCA touring exhibition, Simryn Gill: Gathering has been expanded to include the Australian premiere of Gill’s major work Throwback, and a pamphlet that reflects on the gardens at Heide.