John Elliott

About

I am a multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture, installation, drawing, and online/digital.

My work is about our relationship to technology and information.

As technology advances and our collective knowledge expands, our individual ability to understand the inventions that surround us has diminished. It is possible to look at a steam engine, deduce how it works and make an educated guess of the purpose of most parts. It simply isn’t possible to do this in a meaningful way with the semiconductor based technology that permeates the modern world.

As the writer Arthur C Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The same thing has happened to knowledge. According to the latest estimates over 400 million terabytes of data are created every day. This is so much data that it becomes functionally meaningless. The majority of our knowledge is also packaged for convenience of machines and encoded with 1s and 0s. The droplets in the sea of data are indistinguishable - a funny cat video is no different to a life saving medical record or a bank transaction or a glob of fake news or the structure of a vaccine - I find this terrifying, hilarious, and endlessly fascinating. The patterns of dots and stripes that cover much of my work mix decoration and data and could be translated back into a human readable form.

Once upon a time there was a common belief that technology would create a better future, but we seem to be losing our way. Instead of using technology to bring about a golden age we seem to be willingly moving towards a neo feudalist future.

I’m particularly interested in exploring nostalgia for the future we were promised but which never arrived. My sculptures are often ambiguous, playing with form and scale, being both cargo cult facsimiles of robots and machines and futuristic architectural models using a mixture of found or recycled objects and inappropriately low-tech materials like wood and paint.

My work draws from many sources including science, mathematics, music, literature, and technology, and follows the curiosity I have as a lay person fascinated by and exploring subjects like genetics, numbers, or the way a butterfly flits around a room.

Chance and process are important parts of my work - a splash of ink, rules and choices made with the roll of a dice, a randomly selected word or phrase - and the human compulsion to create narratives and find patterns.

I’ve always been interested in works composed of multiple elements or repetition; the explosion of relationships that occurs between those elements and the idea that a sculpture or installation can be a snapshot, a moment frozen in time, inviting the viewer to participate and imagine the moment just before and the moment just after like physical manifestations of Edward Muybridge’s photographs updated for a sci-fi age.

Text by Nick Kaplony (Artquest) to accompany the exhibition 'Stream'

When first encountering the work of John Elliott one is struck simultaneously and strongly by qualities of colour and structure. Working largely in the realm of sculpture, even forays into other mediums carry a strong sense of preoccupation with these qualities. Be it in combining disparate elements of found materials and detritus in ‘Baba Yagga’s House’ a bizarre hybrid sculpture, or translating email messages into a string of virtual DNA online, his work seems to look at how ‘modules’ connect and how one thing follows another.

The colours vivid and strong, the strange objects Elliott creates bring to mind the building bricks a child uses to first learn about how shapes fit together and how different parts of the world relate. An ornate patterned ceramic globe is slotted into a brightly striped block. Here two opposites (both in pattern and structure) have been combined to hugely satisfying effect. They fit. The analogy of childlike enquiry can be continued in reference to the sense of play that is implicit in Elliott’s practice: There is in an experiment taking place in his work, where a bizarre hypothesis is being tested or a slightly absurd logic is being followed. Indeed Elliott frequently references science and genetics in his titles indicating a link with a scientific interest of fundamentals. The work ‘Sonic Hedgehog mRNA’ is a good example of this fusing of science and child’s-play in which a ball of down is propped up on glossily painted ‘legs’ to resemble the structure of a chemical molecule.

Elliott continues to build a practice with an ever more eloquent visual vocabulary exploring the world of ‘things’ and ‘stuff’ with an undiminished and infectious enthusiasm. His work charms and engages, be it with seductive use of colour and surface, or with its idiosyncratic wit. Watch this space!

  • Light Meets Form
    17th - 26th October 2024
    Bovey Paradiso, Bovey Tracey, Devon
  • Words per minute
    26th September - 5th October 2024
    Middlesbrough Art Week 2024
  • EVOLVER PRIZE
    6th July - 10th August 2024
    Ace Arts, Somerton, Somerset
    Exhibition and inclusion in Evolver Magazine
  • Solastalgia
    1st - 14th July 2024
    Truro Cathederal, Truro, Cornwall
  • Hinterland
    May 2024
    Ovoid Studio, Ovingdean, Brighton
  • Delamore Arts
    1st - 31st May 2024
    Delamore Estate, Devon
  • Postcards
    10th – 20th January 2024
    Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield
  • Solastalgia ISSUE 2 'TERRAFURIE'
    January 2024
    https://solastalgia.square.site/
  • Lingering Memories (MonART II)
    17th November - 6th December 2023
    Fox Yard Studio, Stowmarket, Suffolk
  • English Riviera Winter Open
    5th November - 21st January 2024
    Artizan Gallery, Torquay, Devon
    'Sonnet 106' received an honourable mention from the judges
  • Artbloc Weekender
    13th - 15th October 2023
    Braunton, Devon
  • Studio KIND summer open
    July 22nd - 12th August 2023
    Studio KIND, Braunton, Devon
  • Lets Create! Journey
    Summer 2023
    Devon Artist Network (online)
  • Ashburner Prize Sculpture Exhibition
    1st June - 31st October 2023
    Stone Lane Gardens, Chagford, Devon
    'Picnic' was shortlisted and received a commendation from the judges
  • My Body In My Hands
    May 2023
    SVA John St Gallery, Stroud, Gloucestershire
  • FRONTPAGE / BACKPAGE / CENTREFOLD
    November - December 2022
    Publication distributed at venues of British Art Show 9 in Plymouth
  • South West Printmaking Open 2022
    October 2022
    Studio KIND, Braunton, Devon
  • PATH
    September 2022
    Dovetail Magazine / The Niche
  • Artists At The White Room
    September 2022
    The White Room, Crediton, Devon
  • Ashburner Prize Sculpture Exhibition
    1st July - 31st October 2022
    Stone Lane Gardens, Chagford, Devon
    'State Machine' received a commendation from the judges
  • 30 works / 30 days
    April 2022
    12ø Collective and Artquest (online)
  • The Art of Planetary Science
    September 2021
    University of Arizona (online)
  • Gallery 333
    Summer 2021
    Exeter Phoenix, Exeter, Devon
  • Artist Talk Magazine
    April 2021
    Featuring the We Are Not Just Numbers project
  • We are not just numbers
    2020 - 2021
    Project to record one year of Covid-19 deaths through drawing.
  • Time Machine
    2020
  • Here be dragons
    2011-2019
    Anonymous sculptures, interventions, and digital projects
  • Summer exhibition
    September 2010
    Red Earth Gallery, Bickleigh, Devon
  • The Big Issue (Devon)
    September 2007
  • Stream
    September 2007
    Tiverton Museum, Tiverton, Devon
    Solo site specific installation.
  • Arts Council England - Grants for the Arts Award for Stream
    August 2007
  • Devon Artists Network Bursary
    July 2007
  • Network magazine
    January 2007
  • Stories From the Tower
    2006 - 2007
    With Slowfall Projects, project to record the stories of Hackney residents funded by Hackney Council.
  • The Sculpture Trail at Hebden Bridge (Book documenting the sculpture trail)
    Autumn 2006
  • Marilyn as a Pebble
    September 2005
    Nr Tavistock, Devon
    Site specific Installation.
  • Intercede
    Summer 2005
    With Slowfall Projects.
  • Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail
    Summer 2005
    Hardcastle Crags, Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire
  • Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail
    Summer 2004
    Hardcastle Crags, Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire
  • Blood Hyphen Workshops
    Summer 2004
    Woodbridge Chapel, London
    Slowfall Projects ran a series of workshops supporting the Barbican Art Gallery’s Helen Chadwick retrospective.
  • Interview Resonance FM - Radio
    August 2003
    Interview with Slowfall Projects discussing the exhibition Ringing.
  • Ringing
    August 2003
    St Augustine’s Tower, Hackney, London
    Exhibition with Slowfall Project
  • Chocolate Factory Open Studios
    November 2001
    Chocolate Factory, Woodgreen, London
  • The Visual Haiku
    June 2001
    Peterborough Art House, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
  • Chocolate Factory Open Studios
    November 2000
    Chocolate Factory, Woodgreen, London
  • The Eden Project
    August 2000
    Witzenhausen, Germany
  • Street
    August 2000
    Willsden Green, London
  • Chocolate Factory Open Studios
    November 1999
    Chocolate Factory, Woodgreen, London
  • Exhibition
    August 1999
    Hove Street, Edinburgh
  • Cross-Section - John Elliott & Paul Merrisson
    July 1999
    Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
  • Slowfall
    May 1999
    CyberGlobal Cafe, Soho, London
  • Inside Out
    September 1998
    Queen's Wood, Highgate, London
  • Glued
    August / September 1998
    The Glue Factory, Bow Wharf, London
  • Croak magazine
    Summer 1998
  • ABCEHMU
    August 1998
    The Chocolate Factory, Woodgreen, London
  • Art by Degree
    July 1998
    The Millinery Works Gallery, Islington, London
  • BA Hons Fine Art
    1995-1998
    Middlesex University, London
  • Foundation Art & Design
    1994-1995
    Chelsea College of Art & Design, London