Further Information
Simryn Gill: A Small Town at the Turn of the Century
In A Small Town at the Turn of the Century Simryn Gill returns to her old home town of Port Dickson in Malaysia to photograph the local inhabitants. Drawing on the look and style of traditional portraiture, her models pose against backdrops of their homes, or the wider environs of the village they live in. The locations are frequently beautiful and exotic, the sunny beaches of a South East Asian paradise. However, in a spin on familiar tourist images of Asia, the face of each photographed person is covered by a headdress fashioned from fruit, vegetables, or flowers.
Playing on the humour and absurdity of this scenario these photographs in this series continue Gill’s interest in exploring the often contested relationship between ideas of nature and culture. Using horticulture as a metaphor for the human condition, Gill makes us first look, then laugh, then look again.
For although at first glance the images may appear computer manipulated, closer inspection reveals that the people are actually wearing these fantastical outfits themselves. The photographs seem to provide a glimpse of society in a small town as each subject is captured in the midst of their daily lives. They appear almost oblivious to the strangeness of their appearances. Two women have been disturbed in the process of preparing a meal, the giant gourds on their heads incongruous with the stainless steel cutlery in front of them, whilst in another photo a man goes about his business catching fish despite the vast array of fruit covering his head.
Although the everyday details of their surroundings gives us clues to the personalities of the photographed people, without faces we are somehow barred from really knowing them as individuals. Their headdresses become masks, hiding information from us as spectators. The everyday familiarity of their surroundings contrasted with this erasure of identity can be seen as a reference to essentialist notions of Asia as a place which is exotic and desirable, yet often masked to the western world as outsiders. With a trademark lightness of touch Gill gently draws this analogy for us in a way which is understated and yet very humorous.
Simryn Gill was born in Singapore in 1959, and brought up in Malaysia. She currently lives and works in both Sydney and Malaysia, and has shown extensively across Australia, South East Asia, and Europe. A Small Town at the Turn of the Century is her first solo show in New Zealand. The exhibition has toured to the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, and the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney in 2001, and was also included in the 2002 Sydney Biennale. Gill has been included in several other major exhibitions such as the 2th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2001, the Asia Pacific Triennial 1999, the 5th Istanbul Biennial, and the 1995 Venice Biennale.