Two artworks and found objects from the installation All and nothing are presented.
All and nothing responds to overlooked places, marginal spaces, the frayed places of our city and the non-ideal. Things and locations that hold little perceived significance or influence. Transitory. Yet to be defined and determined, they represent pure potential - the opportunity for something different or better to occur. They represent the contradictory confluence of wonder, dereliction, inception and devastation.
The work presented here juxtaposes two unrelated and diametric realities, both in POV and content, creating a suspended moment of tension and determination - ordinary moments whose confluence teeters on a tipping point.
An intersection of contradiction, hope, fervency and brutality. Unadorned.
Impermanence is emphasized through the use of glassine surface having a disposable quality akin to the vestiges found in the locations.
The work is intentionally momentary—the potential versus the legacy of the artwork was the goal. Once started, artworks were completed directly. No redoing or reworking. Accidents and irregularities were accepted and honoured.
Gillian Iles. All and nothing, mixed media on two glassine sheets, wood, rope & found object, 243.8 × 152.4 cm (96 x 60 inches), 2022. Image credit: Geoffrey Lok-Fay Cheung.
Member since: 2012
Number of exhibitions at the gallery: 7
Tell us a story about Red Head: Artist-led initiatives are important to me. Diversity of and accessibility to artistic spaces is critical. I was a founding member of Propeller and then Loop. I wanted to be part of the legacy and persistence of Red Head. I keep finding new ideas within the unique physical attributes of the gallery. I admire the artists that Red Head draws to it - fearless, experimental and committed.
Since 1997, Gillian Iles has exhibited in public institutions, artist-run centres and commercial galleries in Europe, USA, South America and Canada.
Ideas draw from geopolitical events and their relationship to individual experience. She finds commentary within power dynamics, social constructs and systems of belief related to colonial Western culture; particularly their manufactured existence, illusionary value, tenuous persistence and questionable motives. Contradiction and precarity are relevant at all stages – within idea, material choices and methods of presentation. Gillian’s practice spans painting, sculpture, constructions, sound and video. Installations merge real and illusionary space into a composite of realities and points of view. Often large-scale, her installations respond to the opportunities of a space and ways to implicate the viewer. She is a founding member of two artist collective galleries in Toronto - Propeller and Loop, and has been with Red Head collective since 2012. She teaches at OCADU and Sheridan College in Canada.
