Ellie Harrison

Department for Business, Innovation & Skills

3rd November - 12th December 2014

ARTIST’S TALK: Thursday 13th November 2014

Ellie Harrison was artist-in-residence at Funen Art Academy in Denmark for six weeks from 3rd November - 12th December 2014. With a typically imperialist attitude, she set up her temporary studio at the Academy under a moniker borrowed from the UK Government - the “Department for Business, Innovation & Skills”. She used her time in residence to explore the relevance of and relationship between those three key things - within an art school context and in the local and global society beyond.

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Glasgow Women’s Library

January - September 2012

PERFORMANCE: Thursday 14th June 2012

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Glasgow Women’s Library commissioned twenty of Scotland’s leading female contemporary artists to make new work in response to their collection. Ellie’s project became an experiment in ‘outreach’ and audience development - attempting to bring a whole new, strong and revolutionary young audience to the history contained within the Library, by using it as the home for the “National Museum of Roller Derby” - the UK’s first official archive for the new and exciting all-female, full-contact sport of Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby.

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Wunderbar

31st October - 6th November 2011

Ellie Harrison was artist-in-residence at Wunderbar 2011 in Newcastle upon Tyne, where she presented three major projects during the one-week festival. Firstly her solo show Market Forces which launched Vane on Monday 31st October with a special ‘tour’ of A Brief History of Privatisation by comedian Josie Long. Then on Thursday 3rd November local freelancers came together to break the world record in the second ever Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed and on Friday 4th November, Ellie presented the inaugural Desk Chair Disco with Sports Day During the week, Ellie will also be co-hosted two hour-long shows on Wunderbar Radio with Josie Long and Oliver Braid.

Festival wesbite

Two Degrees

12th - 18th June 2011

Ellie was resident artist at the Two Degrees festival at Artsadmin in London. Responding to the themes of ‘art and activism, climate and cuts’ she developed two new projects for the festival: the first Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed took place on Monday 13th June and was an attempt to set a new world record for the most self-employed people working together in the same place at the same time, over the course of a normal 9-to-5 day. The second was a research project under the banner of ‘A Good Climate for Business’ which aimed to explore the relationship between capitalism and climate change and resulted in the development of her Early Warning Signs project.

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Digital Media Labs

24th - 30th October 2010

Ellie was nominated by curators at QUAD Derby to take part in this intensive, experimental residency at Hull School of Art & Design aimed at encouraging the creative application of touch screen technologies. The ten selected artists were Bob Levene, David Priestman, Eleanor Weir, John O’Shea, Lawrence Molloy, Michael Day, Ross Dalziel, Stuart Childs and Victoria Lucas.

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Occupy at Supernormal

19th - 23rd August 2010

Ellie was selected to take part in the New Work Network Occupy workshop at the 2010 Supernormal festival in Braziers Park, Oxfordshire. The workshop, guided by Richard Layzell, aimed to respond to the context of the festival, its relationship with Braziers International Artists’ Workshop and the community of residents at Braziers Park and their many intersecting investigations into collective working approaches. The artists who took part were Paul Carter & Alexandra Zierle, Melanie Clifford, Rachel Dobbs (Low Profile), Ellie Harrison, Jenny Hunt & Holly Darton, Tom Marshman and Nicola Singh. It was facilitated by Lottie Leedham and Hannah Crosson.

Project website

Plymouth College of Art

1st January - 1st June 2009

In 2009 Ellie was artist-in-residence at Plymouth College of Art. For the first four months of the year she made a monthly research visit to the college to conduct a series of workshops and tutorials with students and to develop a major new installation Vending Machine for her solo exhibition at the college’s Viewpoint Gallery from 23rd April - 30th May 2009. To coincide with the launch of the exhibition, Plymouth College of Art Press published the special book Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector which reflects upon Ellie’s previous ‘data collecting’ works and features a specially commissioned text by Sally O’Reilly.

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Braziers International Artists’ Workshop

3rd - 19th August 2008

Ellie was selected to attend summer 2008’s Braziers International Artists’ Workshop. As a development from previous years, this workshop had a specific emphasis on collaboration through risk-taking and the questioning of existing working methods. The selected artists were by Edwina Ashton, Jonathan Baldock, Katy Beinart, Hangfeng Chen, Sunoj Damodaran, Julia Defferary, Steven Eastwood, Ghalib El-Khaldi, Evgenia Golant, Ellie Harrison, Isabelle Krieg, Olawole Lagunju, Barak Reiser, Chris Schiavo, Mia Taylor and Pauline Thomas.

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Operation Treasure Hunt

1st - 19th October 2007

Ellie was invited by The City Gallery in Leicester to take part in Operation Treasure Hunt - a Creative Partnerships project at Imperial Avenue Infant School in Leicester. Ellie spent five days in residence at the school together with three other artists Frances Bossom, Glenn Boulter and Francis O’ Donnell Smith. Ellie’s Names animation, made in response to the project was shown at the The City Gallery from 11th July - 30th August 2008 as part of the exhibition A Process of Living.

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I’ve Been Watching You

17th November 2003 - 7th June 2007

For three-and-a-half years Ellie was Undercover artist-in-residence at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. Assuming the role of usher she spent her shifts getting to grips with the inner workings of the cinema and expanding her knowledge of contemporary film. After ‘coming out’ as an artist in 2007 she was asked to present her findings as one of the commissions for the launch of Digital Broadway - the cinema’s new digital arts programme alongside works by Marcus Coates, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie and Annie Watson.

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Part-time

26th June - 23rd July 2006

Ellie was one of the three artists commissioned by the Liverpool-based artist-run organisation Prime, to take part in the project Part-time. The artists were required to spend four weeks working undercover in low-wage jobs and to make work in response to their experiences. Ellie was not able to find one employer for the entire time, but instead did a variety of jobs, temping working, interviews and training sessions in and around Nottingham. Ellie formed the Union of Undercover Artists alongside the other two artists, Elizabeth Kearney and Joanna Spitzner, as one of their major responses to the project.

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Bath Time

5th - 18th June 2004

For two weeks, Ellie was artist-in-residence at Victoria Baths in Manchester - a popular, ornate Victorian swimming pool complex which has been closed to the public since 1993. Ellie used her period of residency to research for her web-based commission Bath Time. The residency was part of the Transition art programme, which ran at the baths from 2003 - 2004 and culminated in the exhibition For the Time Being: A Promise of Progress at from 4th - 19th September 2004 at which Bath Time was launched.

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