An interview with artist Simryn Gill

RJ says:
Hello Simryn.

Simryn says:
Hi.

RJ says:
You have an ongoing exhibition at the Tate Modern in UK – ‘Untitled 2006’.

Simryn says:
Yup.

RJ says:
Gill’s work questions the coherence of systems that humans create to ‘know’ the world around them. Working with a myriad of materials, including books, plant materials, photographs and other found objects, she encourages the viewer to reject a rigid classification of their surroundings in favor of arrangements which offer uncertainty, disturbance and new possibilities.

RJ says:
The above is the write up for it.

RJ says:
Can you tell me what was most important for you to get across to your audience?

Simryn says:
I make things, pictures as a kind of thinking aloud, for myself.....can't really say that I make things to get something across....

Simryn says:
Usually I am exploring some curiosity, expanding on some question that I may have carried around for a while, sometimes quite a long while......the process of 'doing', whether research or making records, or collecting some things, can be, for me, a way of entering the question....its always something of a surprise that the residue of this thinking aloud, what gets called 'art' seems to find receptive audiences..

RJ says:
I see.

RJ says:
For Untitled 2006, you were exploring classifications and new arrangements? Are these questions central to your ‘curiosity’, your process of 'doing'?

Simryn says:
Well, one mustn't take 'blurb' too seriously....too literally!

RJ says:
In another exhibition of yours- 'Dalam', you asked - ' Do lots of people held together by geography add up to the idea of a nation or single unified group?' Questioning classification and reality are integral to my art and I was wondering if this is central forays in your work.

Simryn says:
Tell me about your art...what makes you do it...?

RJ says:
You reversing the roles..ok ...I was born a Sikh in Malaysia , spent 15 years in UK and am now living, working and practicing my art in Singapore. It is important to me that I question what kind of hybrid and conflicting identities are mitigated through my paintings/my art.

RJ says:
What is important to you Simryn? Where are you coming from?

Simryn says:
I'm not sure I understand your question. And I wonder about fixed roles...

RJ says:
There are no fixed roles. I have followed your work and I see an unprecedented depth and revelation in it. I guess the question is what spurs the questions that you referred to earlier? Where are the insights coming from?

Simryn says:
OK I guess I am being a little unfair......I can't answer 'what’s important to me'....that’s too big and too general.......and as I said I make things as really to give curiosities form.....how to make conceptual difficulties 'material', almost like the excreta of thinking...

Simryn says:
.....and the things I think aloud about, well, they can be hard to articulate, which is why I work them through 'stuff'....I'm not being evasive here....its how 'to be' in the present, in our collective present (if there is such a thing) or in ones private present......each brings many layers often contradictory, often absurd, sometimes ugly sometimes poignant, and usually just hard work....

Simryn says:
…but also very messy, funny, political, sensual...

RJ says:
Wonderful, wonderful Simryn and thanks..

RJ says:
Tell us a little about your proposal for the Singapore Biennale 2006 if you dont mind.

Simryn says:
I am still working on this, on the form the work will take...so it’s not really describe-able yet.

RJ says:
Perhaps a gist?

Simryn says:
Really its on very shaky ground right now....its always a wonderful time in work, shaky ground, but never a good time to talk about it...

Simryn says:
!!

RJ says:
I understand.

RJ says:
I wanted to talk to you about some of the many exhibitions that you have held around the world. Which ones stood out most of all for you? I loved 'HAIR', 'DALAM' and the present one at Tate.

Simryn says:
I guess for me I think more about the work and the making of it rather then the exhibitions. I have some favorites.... 'vegetation', a set of 5 small b&w pictures I did in 99, disguising myself as local flora in various places. I love it for its futility and the failed quality of the disguises, the total non disappearance in landscapes....it was fun and funny and strangely comforting work to make..

Simryn says:
Maybe because it is somehow doomed as an idea...

Simryn says:
And 'out of my hair', which is I think what you referred to, is a portrait of a good friend, Rani Moorthy who is a wonderful (Singaporean) stage actress now living in Manchester, wearing a banana skin wig, blond which is bound to turn back to black in a few days, as the skins rot...

RJ says:
I am going to sneaky up on you with an awkward question - Born in Singapore, coming back to sterile safe Singapore where some say everything conspires to slap you away from stepping out from the straight and narrow. Is the Biennale doomed? Will it be a failed experiment? Will it rot upon its clean and safe precincts?

Simryn says:
Quite to the contrary, I think it’s an interesting place to be thinking aloud...to give form to questions... 'fail' in terms of art is a strange concept I think, one does, and then the things go out in the world....

Simryn says:
I understand that you turned from being a scientist to painting. I'd really like to hear about that move...

RJ says:
Yes. I was a mathematician...did 'number theory' for my PhD. There are some parallels there in both disciplines. More than most people think. I am presently interested in the way we can describe the physical world by referring to its quality, its beauty, its morality...

When did you turn to art? How have you touched such amazing heights? That makes for an interesting story..

RJ says:
Have you always been an artist Simryn?

Simryn says:
I first showed in 1991, with a group of friends in Adelaide, I guess its kept going,

Simryn says:
As a friend of mine once said, its better then driving taxis...and another argued that lying on his sofa dreaming up improbable activities and things to make and supporting oneself through that....not much to add to that really...

RJ says:
Brilliant.

Simryn says:
Its a very intense way to try to make sense of things which mostly don't add up....

RJ says:
Do you reckon there is something in what Kant suggested once about the ‘genius’ artist?

RJ says:
Does it reveal something in us? Makes this world a better place?

Simryn says:
I don't know the Kant reference; and I'm not at all sure about art making the world a better place....

RJ says:
Where do you find the energy to continue? Why do you do it?

Simryn says:
Because I can't not. I actually love the 'doing'....

RJ says:
It is the in-betweens that get to me. What is that you are doing when you are not 'doing'?

Simryn says:
I'm afraid I don't have that difficulty, so I can't be of much help...

RJ says:
Haha..thanks Simryn.

RJ says:
Final few questions before we finish if you don’t mind.

Simryn says:
Ok.

RJ says:
The theme of the biennale is 'belief'. What are you thoughts on this?

Simryn says:
Belief is a really huge net. Its almost like saying the theme is 'life'. I know that to a degree this is being interpreted as religion, through some of the venues being chosen, and perhaps thats important and challenging because the kinds of really destructive rigidity in that aspect of belief which is global it seems, at present....

RJ says:
Please please ..go on...

Simryn says:
So its a very challenging theme I guess, but also a really open one, one can take belief anywhere really....I am looking forward to seeing the works.

RJ says:
Finally, I am going to throw something at you out of the blue and see where you go with it - What influence do you think 'street art' is exerting on the scape of visual arts today? How does it matter if at all? How will paintings and art appreciation change?

Simryn says:
I am not a painter, or a picture maker, really. I am curious about how things, objects, ideas circulate, and shift form or meaning or even content as they move, geographically, and in hierarchies too.....I am particularly intrigued by the private and the domestic as a place. So what you call 'street art' is very much in that continuum of inside/outside, I am always amazed by the constantly changing graffiti on walls I can see from the train I use regularly. I pick things up off the street all the time, run over stuff, things people have dropped: I love the little roadside shrines that we see all over south east Asia, here in Sydney I often see little impromptu shrines on pavements in front of houses, I saw one in London recently , in Hackney, it was hard to tell why but it was there, a ring of flowers...beautiful, something that one remembers for a long time, it had a private reason for being there, but I didn’t need to know the reason for the thing to get under my skin. My teenage daughter tells me that often she and her friends give each other things they make themselves as presents, a stenciled t-shirt, or a small badge, or a little thing on a hair slide..

Simryn says:
She says that they are giving each other the most precious thing, their time. Its easy (and quick) to go and buy, but much more valuable as a gift to give time, and they are knowingly resisting being co-opted by the selling machine, even if briefly...this is street art, simple, private, knowing....

RJ says:
Wonderful wonderful.

RJ says:
I appreciate you taking the time.

RJ says:
I wish you the best of luck with the Biennale.

RJ says:
Thank you thank you.

Simryn says:
Thank you. And thank you for this conversation.

Simryn says:
Take care