Tarryn Gill
Limber 6, 2021
mixed media (EPE foam, handstitched lycra, steel armature by Neil Aldum, artificial human eyes)
74 x 106 x 70 cm
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The characters Tarryn Gill creates perform a similar function; they draw from a reserve of strange and familiar images - gods, monsters, the Ricky Horror Picture Show, sculptural antiquities, medieval...
The characters Tarryn Gill creates perform a similar function; they draw from a reserve of strange and familiar images - gods, monsters, the Ricky Horror Picture Show, sculptural antiquities, medieval illustration, Muppets, her family, her cat, herself – to reach into the heart, brain and belly and draw something deep out into dialogue. Her sculptures produce a waking ‘dream state’ – awash with symbols and weird logic and studded with guides to lead us on our quest.
These figures – the first in the ‘Limber’ series - were inspired by the awesome scale of Trembesi trees that Tarryn had walked amongst in Indonesia. In their curling branches she identified a powerful force that she coded as matriarchal, the suggestion of a quiet inner strength that could counter hypersexualised and objectifying representations of bodies identified as female. The figures inspired by these trees are monstrous but powerfully so, neither human, plant nor animal, embedded with eyes that make contact with their audience from all angles. Whereas previous works have used their fantastical qualities to suggest an otherworldly or internal space, the Limber series seem fantastically embodied, headless and yet not dissociative. They are firmly of this world rather than visiting from the next.
These figures – the first in the ‘Limber’ series - were inspired by the awesome scale of Trembesi trees that Tarryn had walked amongst in Indonesia. In their curling branches she identified a powerful force that she coded as matriarchal, the suggestion of a quiet inner strength that could counter hypersexualised and objectifying representations of bodies identified as female. The figures inspired by these trees are monstrous but powerfully so, neither human, plant nor animal, embedded with eyes that make contact with their audience from all angles. Whereas previous works have used their fantastical qualities to suggest an otherworldly or internal space, the Limber series seem fantastically embodied, headless and yet not dissociative. They are firmly of this world rather than visiting from the next.
