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Simryn Gill's mysterious installations frame differing demands for authenticity. Many of her works reflect multiple cultural contexts, establishing a tension between language and appearance. On the one hand, language is explored through titles and, more recently, through the inclusion of text. On the other hand, appearance takes the form of a ruse in which objects are not what they initially seem to be. Whether a Native American headdress constructed out of dried red chillies, a conglomeration of found sea-washed pieces of glass with words engraved upon them, or suitcases cast in agar, Gill's selection of materials is always unexpected. In other words, materials are used as a guise, evoking arcane connections between people and cultures. Out of this rises, for the viewer, a constant oscillation between the literal, as the re-telling of an experience, and the metaphorical, as the replacement of one material with another.
During 1991 and 1992 Simryn Gill executed a number of works which focussed on the cultural definition of 'Indian'. Ten Little Indians (1991), for instance, utilises as title, a rhyme about Native Americans while its images of Indian women were reproduced from story books. Ten Little Indians comprises a series of images of Indian women photocopied onto hand-made mulberry paper. Arranged in a design of squares within squares, women's faces are repeated so that they resemble a design rather than an image. The mechanical manner of reproduction stands in direct contrast to the imperfections of the hand-made mulberry paper. This juxtaposition of image and material suggests a consideration of photocopying as a process of scanning. Comparisons can be made between scanning an image and scanning personal appearance: just as light scans an image, detecting tonalities... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline