Jill Gibson

Current and Upcoming

Royal Society of Sculpture Summer Show 2024

The exhibition will be held at Dora House from 22 July- 21 September 2024.

Dora House, 108 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RA

Thank you David Mcalmont, this years curator for the RSS Summer Show, Kensington, London, for selecting my work, ‘Something Chimera’. I am delighted to have this opportunity to show one of several newly developed hand modelled  smaller scale works.

Something Chimera is a direct response to the given RSS 2024 exhibition title Reality Check and is an exploration of an enigmatic figure from Ancient Mythology. The Chimera is indeed complex, fantastical, unattainable – something not real and which leads to a more complex consideration. It attempts to question what we present as real and what constitutes what is real, and how, psychologically, we have so many different personas at our disposal. For example, how we behave in a familial context, how we are in a social context, a sexual context, a work context. We have the capacity to be different things to different people and therefore we are never completely sure of ourselves and of that self that we are presenting. We are never sure when we meet new people what facet of themselves, we are meeting. A multifaceted human representation of self that it is almost impossible to quantify. If we are searching for certainty, then we must question why we behave the way we do in certain contexts.
This leads to a consideration of conditioning: socialization, our capacity to change, our resistance to change, our education and often, specifically in our formative years, we are imbued with a fear of failure, a fear of getting things wrong, which is indeed crucial to getting things right. It is a crucial part of our development, acquiring curiosity, exploration, rebelliousness. All fundamental facets of what makes us human, simply by not being prepared to be wrong.
If we look at the Chimera as an object, it is indeed fantastical, but also representational of the multifaceted potential of being human within the imagination and in reality. The Chimera has the power to evoke fear: fear of the unknown, fear of a higher order, in a similar way to a religious icon, with its many layers, including the repression of independent thought, of creativity or expressing our sexuality. A gender strand comes into play, the chimera, often portrayed as female becomes confrontational for example, certainly within a phallocratic society – how we are ‘allowed’ to present ourselves in society, how we are conditioned to behave in certain ways, and if we deviate from the ‘accepted’ or the ‘norm’, it is often scorned or ridiculed. One could suggest that fear has been used by both the church, and by the ruling classes, and agents of social oppression be it physical or psychological, and it is the fear of stepping out of line, or getting it wrong, the fear of exceeding one’s position, or standing up in protest. Fear, in a way underpins many social structures which are reliant on coercion and fear is the major enemy of change. This raises the question: How else does one get oppressed people to vote for the oppressor. A mystery indeed. One could say it’s a kind of Chimera. Presented as real, with a power to intimidate.

A Chimera - an amalgamation of bodily parts, creating fantastical, otherworldly creatures that are presented as factual and believed to be real. Historically, displayed in museums or in prominent public places, the Chimera, a word which stems from archaeological artifacts, fashioned by human hands, and embroidered within many cultures, including Egyptian, Greek, Indian and Roman mythologies. These creatures display human heads, animal torsos, and often bird or insect wings and were revered as demons, gods or goddesses which were deemed a source of power: a presiding fear over individuals and even whole societies.
The intention was to create a piece which is real, exists, displays human qualities but has the potential to change. Ostensibly a metaphor, the Chimera stems from a line of tradition and mythology. I have chosen to represent this metaphor in a sculptural context, One of a series, made from wax which, as a material itself, has inherent qualities to change in different environments.

Recent :

Bells of Lapua: An interactive large scale sculptural works based on the lives of female factory workers in the 1970's in Lapua, Finland who lost their lives in the largest industrial accident in Finland's history. 

Roots: Video Installation - based on the extraordinary life of Jeanne Barret, the first woman to (unwittingly) circumnavigate the globe.

I am Seeping: a large scale sculptural, interactive and site specific work which explores themes from global extraction, exploitation and pollution of raw materials, to the minutia examining degeneration, demineralization, of our very being.

Beneath our Feet: an interactive large scale, site specific sculptural work, suitable for parks, gardens and woodland which explores and examines the often unseen world beneath our feet, again examining areas including decay, fragility and transience.

For further information and details of current proposals available please contact: galeriegilardie@gmail,com If you are interested in exhibiting large scale sculpture and video works which examine historical female narratives and female iconography, fragility, and transience please contact me for further details.