Getting to Know Ruby Gill
Following on from a sold-out national tour of her motherland, South Africa, Melbourne-based artist Ruby Gill has just unveiled her new single ‘Your Mum’. We asked her to tell us about herself:
I am… on the verge of tears, hungry or inappropriately laughing pretty much all of the time. Is it normal? Is it just me? Can you help? Is this just an interview? Are you a real therapist? Where are my car keys?
Your Mum is… about not being able to say what you feel out of fear that you’ll set off the fuse on the world. But then admitting that you’re not fucking fine anyway, because it’s 2am and you’re on the couch and it’s not funny anymore. And it’s also about your mum’s mac and cheese with tomato slices on top and my inability to meet those standards, I guess.
Home is… being woken up by birds in the sunrise. In South Africa, it’s the obnoxiously loud call of a hadeda ibis, which is like the shiny grey cousin of the bin chicken (yes, they can be even uglier). Here in Aus, it’s red wattlebirds in the magnolia tree outside my window and magpies on the merri creek. These are good questions. Here is a hadeda:
I spend too much time… on public transport.
I’ve never… actually seen what I look like without glasses on.
It might surprise people to learn that… the tension of the 230-odd strings in a grand piano exert a combined force of 20 tonnes on its cast iron frame. I think that’s absolutely the sort of metaphor for the cast iron strength required to deal with the combined force of 230-odd ridiculous, tragic, nonsensical, astounding and profound mortal occurrences that seem to revel in the act of exerting their tension on the people we love most and who deserve it least.
It’s a ridiculous world, and I’m constantly humbled by the cast iron homosapiens who get up, hang the washing out to dry, and exist extraordinarily in the face of unthinkable grief, stress, trauma, circumstance, oppression, fear, prejudice, loneliness and strings and things.
Please come to our single launch. There’s a piano.
…
RUBY GILL – ‘YOUR MUM’ LAUNCH SHOWS
THU 15 NOV | THE GASOMETER HOTEL, MELBOURNE VIC *
FRI 16 NOV | HOWLER, MELBOURNE VIC *
SAT 17 NOV | WESTERNPORT HOTEL, SAN REMO VIC *
SUN 18 NOV | WRANGLER STUDIOS, MELBOURNE VIC (U18) * – SOLD OUT –
SUN 25 NOV | THE WORKERS CLUB, MELBOURNE VIC
THU 13 DEC | TAP HOUSE, BENDIGO VIC *
FRI 14 DEC | KAROVA LOUNGE, BALLARAT VIC *
SAT 15 DEC | EVENLYN HOTEL, MELBOURNE VIC (U18) *
SAT 15 DEC | THE BARWON CLUB, GEELONG VIC *
THU 27 DEC | WOODFORD FOLK FESTIVAL, WOODFORD QLD
* Supporting Lime Cordiale
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