White Noise | may 30 - june 23, 2007

Will Gill at Peak Gallery
Globe and Mail | Saturday June 23, 2007
by Gary Michael Dault

WILL GILL AT PEAK GALLERY

For the St. John's-based painter-sculptor Will Gill, the word seems to be one big elision: Within the bounded plane of his small collage and acrylic paintings on birch panels, thing flows into thing, image into image, experience into experience. His collages seem pretty at first - and indeed they are made of mellifluously coloured and felicitously combined shapes that unquestionably offer a rich visuality as apparently innocent as bubblegum and clouds.

But there is considerably more to them than that. What looks at first like pure composition is, in fact, impure composition, whereby the everyday is jauntily juxtaposed to the horrific (Plane Down) or the evanescent is imbued with the concrete (Mini's Perfume) or two etherealities are compared (Smoke Light), or two banalities mutually ignited (Stovepipe Shovel). It takes a while for Gill's paintings to fully declare themselves (you have to work through the guileless pleasure they provide), but when they do, the results are far more resonant than you'd ever imagine.

23 Morrow Ave., Toronto; 416-537-8108

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