Rhythm Adjust

"My practice uses digital film, photography, and computer-generated imagery to tap into the behavioural underpinnings of image-making and explore its relationship with artifice and display. Playing with archetypes, tropes, and iconography from art history as accessible points of contact, my work looks to peel back the layers of illusion that encase our interaction with images to explore the boundaries between pathos and humour, observation and voyeurism, and nature and artifice.

Along with skulls, flies, rotten fruit, and flowers - soap bubbles form part of the iconography of vanitas paintings of the 17th century - which usually took the form of still life paintings as a meditation on the frailty of human life and the constant proximity of death.

In this image, the computer-generated bubble is more opaque, less fragile, and stands as the focal point. The air is encased and reinforced. In that sense, it’s optimistic and hopeful, and its inherent CGI artifice points towards the technological progress that has helped to keep things ticking over for many in tricky times." - Theo Ellison, 2021

Accolades

Education: Royal College of Art, 2017

Recently exhibited at: Saatchi Gallery, Arebyte Gallery, PALFREY Gallery, Birminghan Museum & Art Gallery

www.theoellison.com
@theo_ellison