Tarryn Gill: Guardians

On display for the first time since its acquisition following the 2016 Adelaide Biennial, Guardians was created by Perth-based artist Tarryn Gill after a residency at the Freud Museum in London.

Gill has crafted an uncanny theatre series of sound-emitting soft sculptures inspired by the studio of psychoanalyst Anna Freud, who would knit or weave at the loom while analysing her patients. Guardians also pays tribute to Gill’s family, specifically her seamstress mother and tailor grandmother.

The influence of Freud’s famous father Sigmund Freud can be seen through Gill’s selection of characters, who are reminiscent of the pioneering psychoanalyst’s personal collection of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Asian antiquities or ‘gods’. Like the objects in his collection, Gill’s eerie works appear like seers or prophets.