Israeli-born Gili Tal is an emerging contemporary artist living and working in London. Her practice revolves primarily around photographic images of banal quotidian subject matter found in the capitalist metropolitan environment.
Read MoreTal studied her BFA in Painting at Camberwell College of Art in London (2003–2006) and completed an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College in 2010. From the outset, her interest has been in the architecture, objects, and people that are so ingrained in the everyday life of the city-dweller, that they have become invisible.
The artist takes photographs and sources images online of consumer items, such as drink bottles or children's toys; common urban features like handrails, trash cans, benches, bike racks, fountains, and bridges; and passing snaps of people engaged in ordinary activities like shopping, socialising, and walking in the street. These images are stretched across canvases or billboards, or printed on curtains and roller blinds.
There is nothing particularly individual or special about these images, and that is the point. It is through the presentation of these banal images that the artist seeks to interrogate our idealisation of the city and passivity to our real everyday surroundings. Tal demonstrates how branding and marketing permeates these surroundings, and how specific structures control our movement through the city.
Gili Tal is not limited to printing or photography in her practice. In some cases, she digitally intervenes in photographs. In Love and War (2014), for instance, she has added an assortment of Unilever trademark products in the foreground. In the 'Cityscape' series (2014–2016), Tal has added the names of cities in oil paint over printed cityscapes, alluding to the cliché of high street T-shirt brands.
Tal also brings the banal into the gallery in the form of installations. For Fridge (2015), Tal presented a set of commercial refrigerators stocked with familiar soft drink brands. Repurposing a basic household appliance, But the World Keeps on Turning (Der Himmel Über Berlin Version) (2014) consisted of three blenders modified to mix blue pigment with yoghurt at a pace of 60 revolutions per minute.
Whether an object or image, Gili Tal's works take the familiar that we overlook, questioning its apparent nothingness and subconscious influence in a complacent consumerist society. Emerging on the international art scene, her work has regularly featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States.
For the Sake of Those Who Would Discriminate Between Hallucinations, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (2020); Mastering the Nikon D750, GTA Exhibitions, Zurich (2019); Civic Virtues, Cabinet, London (2018); Paris Gardens London, Goton, Paris (2016); Panoramic Views of the City, Sandy Brown, Berlin (2014); Real Pain for Real People, Lima Zulu, London (2013).
Vista View, Galerie Buchholz, New York (2019); Our Creative Heart, Mercy Pictures, Auckland, New Zealand (2018); Death Lolz, Peak, London (2018); Architecture of Storage, DAZ German Center for Architecture, Berlin (2018); Readymade, House Eva Presenhuber, Vnà, Switzerland (2017); Object(ed), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, Utah (2016); Transatlantic Transparency, Mathew, Berlin and New York (2014); One After One, Vilma Gold, London (2013).
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2020
