Madge Gill’s drawings, textiles, and writings have been received variously as mediumistic communication from another world, visionary masterpieces, and works influenced by her mental health challenges. Gill’s drawings are populated by inscrutable female faces, vertiginous staircases, and chequered planes that seem to endlessly proliferate in a dense web of repetitive mark making. In its immense scale, Crucifixion of the Soul (1936) is a monumental iteration of Gill’s characteristic style, though it diverges from her usual monochromatic palette. Reminiscent of fractured stained glass, both in its luminous intricacy and the piecemeal process of its making, the composition developed as the calico fabric was unrolled in sections, each part unfolding into the eventual whole. The faces that punctuate Gill’s work have been theorised as self-portraits, images of Gill’s spirit guide, and as sublimated expressions of isolation, suspended in unstable landscapes.
This is the first time the work of Madge Gill is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Sybilla Griffin
