With their monochrome tones and quiet observational style, which nod to masters of the form including Robert Frank and Sergio Larrain, they are the closest the show gets to straight documentary.
SNAPPY SNAPS SERIES
The earliest series here is also the most uncharacteristic: a selection of black and white photographs he took in Poland between 19. “Photography is how I articulated myself, responded to the world around me, and got rid of my excess energy.” “Even though I feel I have exhausted photography, I am also so grateful to it,” he says, intimating that this survey show, which was four years in the making, may be his last. It is also a journey into the mind of someone for whom photography was a form of immersive, even therapeutic, self-expression.
In a way, the exhibition possesses the energy of the breakdancer and the nerdy inventiveness of the scientist. It came, he says, as a huge relief given how burnt out he felt by then because of his relentless compulsion to make more work.Īs a teenager in Bristol, Gill was drawn to the nascent homegrown hip-hop scene that produced Massive Attack, Tricky et al – “I used to breakdance in legwarmers outside Snappy Snaps” – but was also “obsessed with microscopes and the mysteries of pond life”. Back then, he attended “special lessons” and it was only in 2017 that he was diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). In his schooldays, Gill’s imagination was so active and his inattention so acute that he was not allowed to sit next to a window lest his mind wander outside the classroom. A different type of wildness … a portrait from The Pillar in which birds perch, preen and land on a wooden stake.
0 kommentar(er)
