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... I have a real unease for the way in which things that get recorded then can go on permanently on the internet so nothing can become a memory or a rumour or something that was misheard because everything can be checked and it's the mishearing and misremembering and the way things get described and passed on through description that we lose out on.1
Simryn Gill in an interview with Michael Brand, Director Art Gallery of New South Wales; transcribed from YouTube, May 2013.
In the film Being There (1979), Peter Sellers played Chance the Gardener. The narrative, based on the (1971) novel by Jerzy Kosiñski, explores the space between transmission and reception, that space where meaning is fluid, contingent and, above all, elusive. This space is revealed through the character Chance, a man Louise the Maid describes as 'stuffed with rice pudding between th' ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass'. Chance, purely by chance, becomes Chauncey Gardiner and enters a bastion of influence and power where he is perceived to be a sophisticated seer by the billionaire powerbroker, Benjamin Rand.2
Gardiner's simple utterances on gardening are interpreted as profound political messages and are quoted by the President of the United States. It leads to the gardener or Gardiner being interviewed on a national chat show and, by the end of the narrative, he is being considered as a future President. From our initial perception of the man as a domestic hostage, educated purely by TV, the film concludes with a visual 'allegorical reversal'. Chauncey is shown wandering off through the beautiful garden before walking on water. Chance remains a mysteiy.
As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.3
Simryn Gill is also a gardener. In a short interview with Michael Brand, the Director of the Art Galleiy of NSW, Gill talks of her arrival in Adelaide, describing it as remote and unfamiliar. In response to her dislocation Gill talks of venturing into the garden, describing her initial desire to make things familiar with both her and her plants struggling to make a connection with their new 'remote' environment, in a countiy where the concept of a 'native' garden had...