Simryn Gill

Simryn Gill was born in 1959 in Singapore. She was raised in Malaysia and is now based in Sydney, Australia. Part of Gill's education took place in India and Great Britain.

She is an artist and a photographer who, by finding, collecting and using everyday objects, creates involving art objects. Examples of this are Red Hot (1992), a Native American headdress created from dried chillies. Forking Tongues (1992), a spiral created using things found in the kitchen, such as cutlery and dried chillies. And Wonderlust (1996), a suit created using coconut shells. A lot of Gill's art uses objects unique to her experience and with those objects and artifacts she draws upon parts of her culture and the cultures she grew up with. She also uses words in her art.

Gill has been the main inspiration for my interior brief. Whilst she is very well known for the photographs of the objects and artifacts mentioned earlier, it was her Dalam (2001) project that I based my images on. To form that project, Gill took 258 photographs. She travelled across the Malaysian Peninsula and knocked on the doors of strangers, asking if she could take a photograph of their living room.

I find her work fascinating. Projects such as Dalam, as well as the photographs of her art. Her art engages people. It makes people think about her travels, about the places and cultures where these objects and artifacts came from. From doing a similar thing to Dalam, I know how daunting it can be to do something like that. The funny thing is that in my project, hardly anyone allowed me to take a photograph of their living room. Whereas Gill found that surprisingly, almost everyone was happy to let her take a photograph. I hope it's nothing to do with me. But really, to me, that shows the differences in countries and cultures.


Image Sources:
http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/collection/contemporary_asian_art/simryn_gill
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/simryn-gill