Will Gill
Christopher William (Will) Gill (born July 5, 1968) is a Canadian visual artist known for his wide-ranging works in sculpture, painting, photography, video and installation art.
Born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Gill received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991 from Mount Allison University, where he studied sculpture and printmaking.
"[1] "The 2009 installation Bareneed is a replica of a cast-iron bathtub that Gill saw on the bottom of the ocean floor while sea-kayaking near the titular coastal community (the artist himself has noted that the St. John's setting has been key to his art production).
The maple the artist recovered from the site is found in his work titled Workhorse (1998), permanently installed at the Boreal Sculpture Park in St. John's.
While there he created Automated Butterfly Catching Unit (2001), a large sculptural work, now in the collection of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, previously exhibited at The Rooms provincial gallery.
His creation can be perceived as a warning sign to protect the old trees, a natural heritage, against industrialization, as well as suggesting a historical link connecting Simcoe County's past, its present, and its future".
[12] Gill's paintings, which he creates in small and sometimes very large scale sizes in his private studio, have been described as "simplistic and layered...invitingly crafted and coloured.
"[13] "Cemetery Park (2008) is as frisky and playful as Gum Machine (2008) (both acrylic and collage on panel), with the tombstones and crosses of the former as animated and full of bouncy colours as the latter's gumballs.
The concept for the video "came about through a kind of meditation on the nature of contemporary communication in Newfoundland.... and the images of light moving through the picture frame were meant to convey signals frantically going back and forth as word spread about an accident.
[16] In his haunting installation, High Water, at Toronto's Nuit Blanche 2012, "ghostly objects float on the surface of a small pond in the shadow of Roy Thompson Hall, like lost possessions after a disaster - a baby onesie, a bicycle, a gas canister".
[18] Organised by the Terra Nova Art Foundation, the exhibition was titled About Turn: Newfoundland in Venice, Will Gill & Peter Wilkins.
[23] Gill worked with master boatbuilder Jerome Canning on the piece, which was inspired by the original Black Island Punt crafted by fisherman John Dorey in Notre Dame Bay in the 1950s.
[25] As part of the makeover Canada House ran a competition for artwork - largely to be translated into area rugs for the palatial reception rooms.
"It's an expression of movement, vigour and life that is so much a part of everyday existence in Newfoundland - could be wind patterns, could be an iceberg slowly tracing a course on the ocean.
"[28] In 2017 Gill also participated in the Fogo Island Arts residency program, spending one month at the remote site producing a new body of work called "From the Lion's Den", incorporating sculpture, mixed-media textiles and photography.
Working in direct response to the land, sea, built environment, and people of Fogo Island, it is a commentary on the nature of preservation and finding balance between progress, community agency, and holding tradition close.
"Like much of Gill’s recent work, Camper creates contradictory feelings of unease and wonder, an uncanny rendering of childhood nostalgia overlaid with quiet, ghostlike, otherworldly strangeness.
"Developed during the latter portion of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it employs staged photography to reflect, in visual terms, imagined scenes from unsettled times...
Unusual colour palettes and surreal scenes devoid of figures set the stage to consider absence, aid and imagined rebuilds.
[33] Canadian Art magazine noted that "Gill appreciates the freedoms afforded by living in a collaborative, community-focused scene like that of St. John's.
