Gill, Madge
Background: illegitimate child.
Education: orphanage at Barkingside; transported to Canada for child-labour scheme (farm servant) devised by the orphanage.
Profession/occupation: domestic servant and babysitter on a series of Ontario farms; back in London as a nurse at Whipps Cross hospital, Leytonstone.
Art form/medium: ink-drawing, knitting, weaving, embroidering, piano-playing.
Start artwork: 1926, in a delirious trance-state.
Relevant info: her aunt Kate introduced her to Spiritualism and mediumistic practices.
(Solo-) exhibitions: 2010-11, Frankfurt, Weltenwandler / World Transformers.
References: Weinhart, Martina en Hollein, Max; Weltenwandler / World Transformers. Die Kunst der Outsider, Frankfurt (Schirn Halle) 2010. In 1968, a retrospective was held at the Grosvenor Gallery in the West End.
Outsider Art Sourcebook, 2009, p. 79. info: www.madgegill.com
It was on 3 March 1920, that Madge Gill was first ‘possessed’ by Myrninerest, her spirit-guide. Madge was now thirty-eight, and her contact with this phantom figure would be maintained without interruption throughout the rest of her life.
It was at the age of fifty, that Madge participated for the first time in an annual exhibition of art by East End amateurs, mounted by the Whitechapel Gallery. She showed Reincarnation, a calico roll densely worked in coloured inks, which attracted national press coverage.
From the 1930s on, Madge Gill enjoyed a reputation as a medium in her neighbourhood. She organized séances at her home, drawing up horoscopes and offering prophecies. What continued unabated was her artistic production. Her principal medium became ink-drawing, executed on postcards, sheets of paper or card, and long rolls of untreated calico cloth. Her drawings sometimes are covering immense rolls of calico, which she finished incrementally, earlier parts of the drawing becoming hidden as the fabric was rolled to reveal a new blank surface.
She continued to exhibit annually at the Whitechapel till 1947.
1882 East End of London, England - 1961 England
