This monograph is published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Here art grows on trees' for the Australian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, 1 June - 24 November 2013.  

'Here art grows on trees
features Simryn Gill’s latest works commissioned for the Australian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Edited by the exhibition curator, Catherine de Zegher, this limited edition monograph includes more than 100 artwork plates printed on different paper stocks that demonstrate the generative and cyclic nature in Gill’s remarkable oeuvre of quotidian beauty. The essays by leading international thinkers and writers include: Catherine de Zegher; Carol Armstrong; Lilian Chee; Ross Gibson; Kajri Jain; Brian Massumi; and Michael Taussig.' (From publisher's website)

'
Simryn Gill works in the area of the ephemeral and the domestic, with its daily habits and repetitions in a lived social reality. Hers is the tidal zone, the insecure in- between zone, its significance laying between absence and presence, spiritual and corporeal.

'A temporary building, the Australian Pavilion in the Venice Giardini della Biennale, seems ideal to host Gill’s site-specific project, a few months before the structure will be dismantled and discarded for a new pavilion. With its appearance of a modular beach house, it has an uncanny association with the mangrove tree-lined, beach-front house of Gill’s youth in Port Dickson, Malaysia.

'As always, Gill’s work is precise and poignant. She considers the building’s structure, composed of two rectangular volumes alongside each other, each having a different height and floor level, and unified by a wavy roof which follows the split of the two levels. The upper floor holds the series of twelve large screens of collaged drawings, Let Go, Lets Go, and the lower section shows the series of mine photographs, Eyes and Storms, while the roof is partially removed exposing both works in equal measure to the elements.

'During six months, from June till November 2013, what visitors will experience is a process of disintegration: the transformation of Gill’s artwork by sunlight, rain and wind, by the birds and insects feeding on the paper featuring insects.

'Here, amidst the trees, Gill’s site-specific project Here art grows on trees presents paper works as being of vegetation, as a cog in the whole system of turning wheels, as just a link in the chain, in the string of gems that the world is offering—a cyclic instead of linear world-view.

'Originating from pulp made of decayed plants, the works will slowly return to the vegetal in an organic cycle from foliage to folio to foliage. In short, her project is about entropy, the passage through time: paper’s passage, the work’s passage, the pavilion’s passage, the artist’s passage.' (By the curator, from organiser's website)

Access level

Onsite

Location code
MON.GIS
Language

English

Publication/Creation date

2013

No of pages

296

ISBN / ISSN

9789490693718

No of copies

1

Content type

artist monograph, 

catalogue

Chapter headings

At Home Between Dream Shells, Stardust and Shell Jetty No.3PD - Catherine DE ZEGHER

Words - Paper - Insects - Photographs - Carol ARMSTRONG

Picturing the Tropics Within - Lilian CHEE

Pause - Kajri JAIN

Making To Place: In the Artist's Words, Refracted - Brian MASSUMI

Reverse Engineering - Michael TAUSSIG

Motility - Ross GIBSON

Simryn Gill: Here Art Grows on Trees
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Simryn Gill: Here Art Grows on Trees