Tarryn Gill

Tarryn Gill is a multidisciplinary artist based in Western Australia, working across sculpture, installation, photography, film, drawing, set and costume design and performance. Psychoanalytic ideas have long played a role in Gill’s work, whereby art-making is used as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious. Gill’s aesthetics, materials and processes are informed by her background in dance and competitive callisthenics from the age of 5 to 25, Gill mines this source material to explore body modification, self-expression and female empowerment, asserting the power and value of feminine and personal against the masculine model of genius that has defined much of art history.

 

Through her solo and collaborative practices, Gill has exhibited works and undertaken residency projects across Australia, Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2020 Gill was commissioned by the Fremantle Arts Centre & Department of Culture for the exhibition Bodywork, creating three large-scale works, Limber 1, Limber 2 and Limber 3. These works were acquired by the Art Gallery of Western Australia and presented in The View From Here, a 2021 survey of contemporary art from WA. A series of subsequent works were presented in her first Sydney solo exhibition Dream State (2021), Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert. In 2023, Gill exhibited in Portrait 23: Identity (2023), National Portrait Gallery (2023). In 2021 Gill won the Acquisitive Invitation Art Award 15 Artists with a reclining figure Limber (Bather). This year Gill was awarded the prestigious Lester Prize for her work Limber (self-portrait in relief) (2023).