If Gill’s approach can seem extreme, the results are always strangely compelling. He then re-photographed these strange, layered creations, some of which featured prints that had been buried for a time in the ground to evince a sense of organic decay. That impulse underpins the following series, Hackney Flowers (2004-2007), for which he collected wild plants, seeds and berries from the area and placed them over photographs he had taken of the streets and people. He wanted, above all, “to find a way of evoking the spirit and feel of a place”. “I was stepping back and letting the subject take precedence,” says Gill of his unorthodox approach. The faded colour tones are the result of shooting on a cheap plastic camera bought from a stallholder, but they perfectly suit the subject matter. Since swept away in the frantic redevelopment of the area in the lead-up to the London Olympics of 2012, the market’s hustle and bustle drew Gill there every week for two years. His breakthrough series, Hackney Wick (2003-2005), sets the tone for what will follow: determinedly lo-fi but intensely evocative images of the messy sprawl of a Sunday morning flea market in east London. Wood lice and a blue sky… from Talking to Ants (2009-2013). “After that,” he adds, “I had to dismantle everything I had learned and begin all over again.” Though placed at the start of this exhibition, they mark the end of his brief embrace of traditional photography. “The images say more about me desperately wanting to be a photographer than they do about Poland,” says Gill. 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. 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.
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