Simryn Gill & Looking into Postcolonialism
- Martha Bebe Clark
- Apr 29, 2016
- 2 min read
Had a wander in Tate Modern on 23.03.16 and came across this wonderful series.
A Small Town at the Turn of the Century 1999–200040 photographs, C-print on paper
“Residents of the artist’s hometown in Malaysia are depicted with their faces hidden by tropical fruit in a playful but critical exploration of ‘the exotic’.” – Tate Modern Website
In Gill’s photographs we are seeing a criticism of a continual Western romantic idealism of the ‘exotic’ or the ‘other’. Gill’s playful humor on the subject shines through in terms of the composition. The placement of the subjects is awkward to view; relaxed everyday scenes with a twist. Perhaps reminding a Western viewer of their simplification of a complex culture.
Western depictions of Asian culture by European colonial artists such as Paul Gauguin use indigenous people and the landscape to project a romantic idealistic paradise.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) painted Where Are You Going? (also known as Woman Holding a Fruit) in 1893. Link.
In ‘Where Are You going?’ the subjects are used for the vanity of the artist, not an understanding of a culture. Is it patronizing? A painter or a photographer picks and chooses so carefully where we -the viewer- gaze.
On a technical note, the uses of the complementary colours -and also offset tones/tertiary- of red and green are used beautifully in Gauguin’s Paintings. These strong reds and greens within painting are what I was looking at in Tate Britain’s permanent collection.
There is a piece by Gauguin that was inspired by
‘There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.’ – The Silverago Squatters, 1883 By Robert Louis Stevenson
Website for image.
I saw this piece during Peter Doig’s ‘No foreign Lands’ exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland in 2013. Stunning colours and imagery. Doig uses postcards to influence his work, I have also been using my own collection of old/vintage postcards to inspire my current work/project.
Visually it is hard not to relate it to Gauguin’s ‘Papa Moe or Tahitian Woman Drinking at a Spring’, which intern was inspired by photograph by Charles Spitz.
It is interesting the solitary figures that connect these images. A visual aesthetic followed from one image. The way certain cultures are represented in western art are very narrow.
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