I thought I’d kick off this overview page with a brief synopsis of the main body of work I’ve been making since 2005. I recently read in Michael Craig-Martin’s beautifully judged book ‘On being an artist’ that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the artist remains the most authoritative voice on their own work, and as such should endeavour to write with some alacrity about both the ideas and the processes involved in their practice. With that advice in mind, I’m going to add an eclectic set of notes throughout this new website, in the hope that some of it may be enlightening, or at least intriguing.
Until recently I'd been using the term ‘liquid geometry’ to describe my digital drawings, but have recently decided to go with ‘digital drawing / constructed photography’ instead, in part because some recent studies are more overtly angular in their form. It’s a term that seems to capture the idea of creating the drawings from scratch, on a digital system, before exposing the resulting images to photographic paper using laser light in a darkroom. In all senses the resulting photographic C type prints are wholly constructed within the studio environment, using a combination of digital and chemical processes, before they are ultimately bonded to Perspex, and often then cut to shape, also by laser.
SPECTRA I, was the first of a three-part survey of artists for whom dynamic colour relationships form a central pillar of their practice. From mediaeval stained glass to Pop Art via Fauvism, bold use of colour has been explored continuously throughout art history. Perhaps the greatest master of colour theory, Paul Klee wrote on the subject extensively and was quoted as saying, ‘Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.’
In a contemporary art world endlessly fascinated with concepts of minimalism and fragility, SPECTRA I explores the artists, mediums and substrates boldly defining the colourful zeitgeist. Hosted at the Londonewcastle Project Space featured a wide range of mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, animation and digital art from a vital international roster of 7 artists: Lee Baker / Adam Ball / Chuck Elliott / Katrin Fridriks / Haroshi / James Marshall / Jen StarkEd Bartlett / The Future Tense.
WGSN are the world’s #1 fashion forecaster. So I was really flattered when they asked me to supply four artworks for their London HQ. The final selection was made in partnership with Justin Hammond, curator at the recently launched London art space The Bomb Factory.
Freeny Yianni, ex Lisson Gallery, curates and lives at Close House, a beautiful early Georgian rectory in Somerset, and also now the venue for her ongoing art project Close. Coda at Close presented a substantial solo show of works, hung throughout the ground floor and stairwell of the house, in March 2011.
Produced and curated in conjunction with Freeny, we commissioned Stephen White to document the show, and the well known graphic designers Herman Lelie and Stefania Bonelli to produce a sumptuous catalogue, with text by Matthew Collings.
Texel is a recently completed new tower in the heart of the City of London, a few doors down from Foster and Partner’s 30 St Mary Axe building, also known as the gherkin. So it was great to be asked to install an edition of my Flow 8VO artwork in the main entrance lobby there, just behind the front reception desk. The work is displayed on a 72 inch plasma screen, but could equally well be shown on a smaller screen or larger video wall.
Flow 8VO takes the form of a 24 minute kinetic work for screen, in which time, motion and back illumination are incorporated into the original Flow geometry, to create 8 key 3 minutes sequences in which the geometry spirals slowly downwards within the picture plane, whilst eight key colour variations are sequenced over the 24 minute duration, before looping seamlessly back to the beginning.
Bath Contemporary, now Axle Arts, curated a beautifully hung solo show of my work in March 2017, including Flow 8VO, displayed on a large Sony Bravia flat screen, alongside a great selection of floor standing sculpture. Curated by Bridget Sterling, the gallery is located just above Queen’s Square in Bath.
Over the years I've undertaken numerous projects, commissions and installations, mostly for private homes, but also for workplaces and occasionally public spaces too. This selection represents some of my favourites, including apartments in Bath and London, a commission for a car showroom, screen art for Texel in the city, and some T shirt designs for Armani. I'm looking forward to adding more over the coming years...
In situ images of work at fairs and exhibitions, in the home and work place, and in the studio and workshop here. Probably the best pages to get a broad overview of the work to date...
This beautiful riverside apartment in London is home to a couple who collect art, and have chosen several pieces to install in their home.
Fantastic to be included in the hang at the London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy again this year, courtesy of Hobby Limon at Tag Fine Arts. The RA print fair showcases a beautifully curated selection of some of the best contemporary printwork being made today, well worth a visit.
Catto Gallery invited me back for a third solo show in October 2017. Following on from Generator in 2012 and Lucid / RMX in 2015, Current presented about twenty new studies, alongside maybe a dozen recent works. As ever, Catto dedicated the whole of their fabulous double fronted exhibition space in Hampstead to the show. It's great to be included on a roster that includes Derek Balmer, PPRWA. Another Bristol based artist, and to my mind one of the great British abstract painters working today. You can view more images of the works included in the show here…
Edit 2016 is a recent catalogue of images, a kind of visual scrapbook of works in situ, associated projects, and images of work in progress, both in the studio and the workshop. You can view the publication online here.
A couple of year’s back I started a new Experimental Print Club, powered online by Patreon, a fascinating creative start up. It’s a project that's designed to do a whole number of well understood things in subtly different ways. I remember the thrill of getting new 7” records in my youth, a format that was reasonably affordable, and that might even become collectable if you chose well, but perhaps most importantly would create a marker in time, as each new track was released at a specific moment in your life, and inevitably became linked to whatever you were doing at that time.
With that in mind I decided to start making smaller, more ephemeral studies, that would be editioned at particular moments in time, and posted out to club members, who in turn would pay a modest monthly fee to help fund the project. The quantity of prints in each edition is therefore determined by the number of people in the club on the date of publication. I like the idea that each work is only available at a particular moment in time, that all the works leave the studio never to return, and that the recipients get new work regularly, that will hopefully chart the direction of the studio over a number of years. I hope the pieces will also feed back new ideas that may help to progress my day to day practice of making new work.
If you’d like to know more, link to the Experimental Print Club pages here
Synaesthetic was published in October 2011, and features work from the first six years of the project, presented as a 12" square visual summary of the studio’s work to that date. Including texts by Matthew Collings, Aidan Quinn and Louise Copping, the book features 108 colour pages in a hardback cover, and is available to view online here.
Very occasionally I’m commissioned to make a larger set of works for a particular space, which can be a fabulous opportunity to curate a set that hopefully work well together.
A collector I first met at the Arnolfini here in Bristol some years ago, decided to install seven of my pieces throughout their beautiful, recently converted apartment in Bath, Somerset. After some discussion, we decided to go for a 240cm wide Elemental piece in the main living space; a three part 140cm wide Torsion piece in the main stairwell; and a 240cm wide Breather piece in the back reception room. Other smaller works were also installed throughout the apartment.
About five or six years ago I decided to start making inked works on paper, to contrast with the C type photographic works I'd been making previously. I’ve been exploring a number of more traditional haptic techniques from etching and screen printing alongside more contemporary digital print making techniques, in large part to explore the crossover and differences between these traditional and contemporary methodologies.
That said, the mainstay of the latest editions I’m making here in the studio are being produced by an amazing 10 colour pigment printer, which can apply dense pigment based inks onto a wide variety of media, although I tend to favour 100% cotton papers, largely for the weight and texture. Working in house allows me to fine tune the colour proofs ahead of printing the editions myself. This latest pigment based printmaking technology extends the colour space available by adding vibrant orange, violet and green inks to the palette, and in so doing makes 99% of the colours in a Pantone spot book available to work with. It’s a huge step forward for contemporary printmaking, and a real joy to work with.
MIA: 3 was the third instalment of an annual exhibition initiated by PhD students and staff of the University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Terry Flaxton, UWE, at Centrespace, Bristol, the exhibition featured new video and digital work by students, staff and affiliated artists making work funded by the University’s video art bursary scheme in partnership with Bristol Museum, Knowle West Media Centre, MShed, Arnolfini and Spike Island.
Working alongside an interior designer, a well known London art consultant chose this 120cm diameter laser cut Collider / gilded mandala piece to feature in this stylish refurbishment of a house in London's Belgravia. Collider was drawn in 2012, using the Fibonacci number sequence to generate a kind of golden kaleidoscopic form.
'To celebrate the launch of the Surface 3, Microsoft has teamed up with Beautiful Crime and 11 of Britains's best known contemporary artists to put together an exhibition of specially created original works - and to explore what ‘The Art of Doing More’ means to them.' Microsoft, 2015
London based art consultancy Beautiful Crime and Microsoft invited me to participate in an intriguing show of digitally enabled new work, curated in Liverpool Street’s Broadgate Circus development, not too far from Richard Serra’s extraordinary corten sculpture Fulcrum. The show featured some great work by D*Face, Carne Griffiths, Pam Glew and Russell Marshall amongst others.
Images of selected solo exhibitions, group shows, art fairs and events...
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Chuck Elliott Studio
Cotham, Bristol
United Kingdom
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