Gillian Iles
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Body of work: That's not how we do things here

Do things here  
That's not how we do things here is an installation of paintings that provides a panoramic view of the obscurity of schoolyard politics.

The installation consists of 4 paintings. Each painting's imagery visually links to the next, wrapping around the 4 walls of the gallery creating a selective 360 degree view of a schoolyard. The viewer, ready to interpret, stands in the middle.

The paintings are an examination of ambiguous codes of conduct and burgeoning potentials realized in the microcosm of a schoolyard. The world of youth on the cusp of adolescence is a closed and inaccessible environment of mysterious rituals, customs and codes of behaviour that are unintelligible to outsiders. As a result, within each painting the viewer is intentionally placed just outside of the environment, detached and looking in. Emphasis has been placed on the way in which the youth have organized and arranged themselves in response to the nuances of their enigmatic social hierarchy. The interpretation of the nature of their relationships relies on their body language and proximal positions to each other.

Importantly, That's not how we do things here also examines the ways in which viewer response and interpretation can be manipulated by the organization of visual imagery.


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