Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 20

Simryn Gill: Sweet Chariot, installation view, Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane.

Photo: Carl Warner

Simryn Gill: Sweet Chariot


Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane
16 September – 12 November 2016

Chari Larsson | Review


Simryn Gill, Four Atlases Of The World And One Of Stars, 2009, paper, glue. Collection: Amanda
Love, Sydney. Photo: Carl Warner

Simryn Gill is well known for her subtle process-driven work investigating
time, memory and place. These themes return in her new exhibition, Sweet
Chariot currently showing at Griffith University Art Gallery in Brisbane.
Curated by Naomi Evans, this subtle and evocative show is comprised of three
visually distinct, but thematically interrelated series. The first is an older
sculptural work, Four Atlases Of The World And One Of Stars (2009), located
at the gallery’s entrance. The five atlases are material, tactile balls created from
scraps of paper. On closer inspection, place names present themselves, vestiges
of the maps from which they were selected. By returning the flat map to the
sphere, Gill evokes the ancient iconography of the Titan god, Atlas.
Condemned and exiled by Zeus for his treachery, the five spherical globes
remind us of the task assigned to Atlas: to carry heaven on his shoulders for
eternity.

Much later, Atlas became associated with cartography or the study and
production of maps. An atlas is a useful entry point and reflects the pertinence
of geography and navigation as continuing themes in Gill’s work. Unlike a
book, we do not read an atlas from beginning to end. Instead, its entry point is
random. As described by French philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-
Huberman, an atlas is open to possibilities, and lays no claim to the finitude of
the archive or encyclopaedia. An atlas is a tool that lends itself to browsing and
following unforeseen and unexpected pathways. It is particularly well suited to
creating chains of associations that do not conform to pre-existing axioms.
Didi-Huberman describes the atlas as best suited for “the inexhaustible
opening up to possibilities that are not yet given”.[1]

This evocative chain of associations Didi-Huberman speaks of allows for gentle


conversations between the images to emerge. The second series Sweet Chariot
(2015) is a sequence of vertical black and white photographs taken by the artist
from a small fishing boat in the Strait of Malacca. Reflecting Gill’s interest in
cartography, this narrow stretch of water is one of the world’s busiest shipping
lanes. As the major shipping artery between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the
Strait of Malacca is critical for global trade networks and the economies of
Southeast Asia. The vertical photographs simultaneously point to notions of
migration and relocation, reinforced by the series title, “Swing low, sweet
chariot”. As a song connected with African American slavery, the images gently
evoke the subjugation of geographically displaced peoples.

The final series of relief prints Pressing In (2016) are imprints created from
found timber refuse washed up on the Malaysian coast. Gill’s long-term
interest in collecting and reusing materials comes to the fore. The machine-
shaped timber was collected by Gill from the beach was machine-made waste.
The object speaks of its own history here; its previous lives, travels,
indentations and imperfections, and eventual material decay. Timber
decomposes rapidly in the tropics, accelerated by its time in the water.
Developed with Melbourne printmaker Trent Walter, the prints have been
made onto an eclectic collection of found paper materials including graph
paper, records of pay rolls, navigational logs and charts. Like the timber used
to make the prints, the paper is fragile and unstable, impermanent and subject
to the corrosive effects of time and light. Time embeds itself in the prints as a
visible sign of entropy and decay.

As a straight line, the horizon betrays the actual curvature of the earth’s
surface. Horizons are simultaneously present and absent, stationary and
mobile. The entire exhibition is organised around a paradoxically real and
imagined horizon emanating from the photographs and can be traced along
the gallery’s walls in full circle, enveloping the spectator. Situated roughly at
eye level, the horizon asserts itself as a visual filament, uniting the series of
photographs and prints. If the horizon may be thought of as a positive in the
photographic series, a clear demarcation between ocean and sky, it is a
negative in the prints. Not quite identical mirrors of the same, the printed
shapes float toward a horizontal gap or space, evoking a negative or absent
horizon.

Juxtaposed against the strength of the horizon is the vertical thrust created by
the repetition of the vertical prints and photographs. The gallery space pulses
with the competitive tension created by the horizon’s strength and the upward
momentum created by the vertical shapes. The prints are grouped together in
clusters of three or four, akin to small groupings of trees, reaching toward the
sky. The emphasis on the upright is reinforced by the shapes of the prints
themselves as Gill summons the ascendant forms pursued by her modernist
ancestors, such as Constantin Brâncuși’s Bird in Space (1923) and Kazimir
Malevich’s series of abstract shapes floating in space from 1915. The push and
pull of the vertical and horizontal serves to insert the spectator into the grid as
the map’s logic extends to the actual installation of the work in the gallery
space.

Gill’s palette is sombre and organic, offset by the blue tones of the gallery walls.
Deliberately eschewing narrative closure, works from the series whisper to
each other, delivering alternative, unforeseen exchanges. Gill’s position on the
fishing boat evokes further connections with the flimsy leaky boats used by
asylum seekers. Underscored by the dark and ominous mood created by the
photographs, I begin to consider the history of the found timber fragments
used to make the prints. What is the timber’s origin? Could it be from the
fragile boats used by people smugglers that did not reach their transit
destination of Indonesia? The invisibility of displaced people begins to
permeate the exhibition, as the waterway between Sumatra and Malaysia
subtly shifts from trade route to menacing watery grave.

If maps reduce the complexity of the world to a flat image, Gill seeks to restore
this complexity, albeit in its fragmented and torn form. Gill’s practice has
always been concerned with notions of place. As the first exhibition of her work
in five years by an Australian public institution, Sweet Chariot is a welcome
and important update on this theme, delicately shifting from the personal to
the political.
Simryn Gill: Sweet Chariot, installation view, Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Carl
Warner
Simryn Gill, Sweet Chariot No. 8, 2015. Gelatin silver photographs taken on the Strait of Malacca
from a fishing boat. Courtesy and © the artist

1. ^ Georges Didi-Huberman, Atlas: How to Carry The World On One’s Back?, exhibition
catalogue, Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2011, p. 15.

Chari Larsson is a Research Fellow in Art History, School of Communications & Arts, The
University of Queensland.

! Share on Facebook " Share on Twitter

MORE ARTICLES

Editorial
Editorial
Eve Sullivan
Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski: And the earth sighed
Profile
Julianne Pierce
#
Looking for art in all the wrong places; Repositioning art in a
regional context
Feature
Marco Marcon

#
The Derwent Project
Profile
David Stephenson and Martin Walch
#

Losing the big picture: Surviving the Art Hunger Games


Feature
Joanna Mendelssohn

Dani Marti: New York, Sydney, Cessnock


Artist Profile
Kit Messham-Muir
#
Lucas Ihlein: 1:1 scale art and the Yeomans Project in North
Queensland
Interview
Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna (Latitudes)
The Palmer Sculpture Biennial
Profile
Tracey Lock

#
Henry Jock Walker: Surfer, artist, localist
Artist Profile
Jessie Lumb
Trevor Flinn: In the Mallee
Artist Profile
Trevor Flint

Solastalgia and its cure


Feature
Ann Finegan
Warmun Arts. You got a story?
Feature
Anna Crane, Frances Kofod and Alana Hunt

#
GET THE ARTLINK APP
For phone or tablet
Copyright © Artlink Magazine | Contemporary art and ideas from Australia and the Asia-Pacific | About Artlink |
Terms & Conditions | Contact Us | Links

! | "
Artlink wishes to acknowledge the copyright of the artists whose images appear on this website.
Please note that images cannot be copied by users of this site and copyright remains with the artist or the rights holder at all times.
Web design by Triplezero

Вам также может понравиться