Poetry/Ekphrasis
Haunting Leaves in the Eyes of the Shore
Simryn Gill. Artist. Adrift
morning.
do — you — speak — eng — lish?
she looks back. uncertain
of context. 1987
Adelaide. the neighbor kindly meant?
square № 31.
does she speak english?
Singapore. Malaysia. India. UK. Australia.
home is not a place not a house.
she carries places within. place
a verb to espouse.
Port Dickson. syzygium grandis.
she floats. Like Leaves.
people hug
the shores.
while leaves drift
once they fall.
xenophobia circumspect
margins not flush along the edge.
random square № 96.
no photo, no synthesis.
leaf-green olive buffalo-brown
burnt-sienna maroon saffron
emerald jade zoot.
representation is a strange notion.
what to make of uprooted thoughts.
what of trimmings she asks.
synthesis sans photo.
curl. crisp. crumble.
not dead. into the flux of
a scheme magnificent
in oblivion they thrive
oh how they thrive!
oh how they thrive!
do many leaves show the whole tree?
does a big group tell you less or more?*
oh how do they thrive?
oh how do they thrive?
oh how they thrive.
© Pseu Pending (Seu) 2023
And so, the squares joined the margins
Artist Simryn Gill
Drifts in Sydney, Australia, and Port Dickson, Malaysia, her hometown. Born 1959, Singapore. Educated in India and the UK. Gill shines in photography and installation art.
Like Leaves (see above photo for detail) appeared in her first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia — Hugging the Shore — at the Center of Contemporary Art, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2015.
Syzygium grandis leaves from Port Dickson hug a tender spot in her heart. They fall like confetti along the shore. Gill trimmed them into hundreds of 2"x2" squares (and later in grander iterations) and let them dry naturally. Viewers witnessed the operatic color change, edge curling, and final decay over time as the show went on.
And so, the squares joined the margins.
The title Hugging the Shore is a reference to John Updike’s 1983 essay collection of the same title. Updike compares the critic to one who stays close to the shore, unlike the writer of fiction or poetry who sails the open sea. The exhibition is a metaphor for looking at the world from the shore while attempting to shift perception from a fragment to the whole picture. (Seu)
Simryn Gill represented Australia at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) with Here Art Grows on Trees. She found a voice in dOCUMENTA (12) and dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, and Tate Modern, London.
*Author’s Conversation with Simryn Gill, 2015
Thanks to The Howling Owl for accommodating the howls.
