Tracy Williams, Ltd. is pleased to announce our third solo exhibition by Simryn Gill, Holding Patterns. Holding Patterns is comprised of three new works: 9 Volumes from The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 2008, Breathing out, 2010 and Naughts, 2010.

Naughts is made up of circular forms collected by Gill during many walks. These washers, nuts, plastic bands, and seals have been slowly amassed, and are perhaps a measure of time or a record of the absentminded attentiveness this kind of gathering requires. Gill invites her audience to sit at a table and sift through, sort, and rearrange these zero-shaped objects in various materials.

Breathing out is a work made from a collection of books of memoirs and personal stories. Compiled initially in Sydney and completed in New York, the artist further culls torn bits of words and sounds and releases them across a wall of blank paper.

9 Volumes from The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, much like her ongoing series Pearls, are nine entire books transformed into nine balls. Gill found these books in an annual library sale held by Sydney University; random numbers apparently rejected by the library from a complete set of nearly a hundred volumes published by the Government of India in the 1960’s. Viewers are invited to touch the balls, pick them up, cradle, and stroke them. Cushions are provided so that one might sit down with the balls and in lowering ourselves to the ground our actions become an unexpected way of ‘taking art’. In the “2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Before & After Science” catalogue, Linda Michael says of this work: “Gill’s labor of remaking the book in a new form, available for us to hold and touch, asks us to understand things through actions. Could we learn as much from touch, or through making, as from reading?”

Simryn Gill was born in Singapore and presently lives in Sydney, Australia and Port Dickson, Malaysia. Gill has a diverse practice, including making photographs, sculptures and collections, and writing. Her work could be described as a sorting of the residue of her immediate environments, creating unexpected archives and records of the things she finds. Working with simple materials, Gill channels the elusive meanings of places and her relationships with them into a realm of subtle, critical engagement. Her recent solo exhibitions include: “Letters Home”, Amrita Jhaveri, Mumbai, 2010; “Inland”, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2009; “Gathering”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2008. Recent group shows include: “Animism”, Kunsthalle Bern, 2010; Sharjah Biennial, 2009; “Transmission Interrupted”, Modern Art Oxford, 2009; The Biennale of Sydney, 2008; Documenta XII, Kassel, 2007.