About the exhibition
Coda on Cork Street presented a beautiful opportunity to host and curate a two person show with my good friend Anna Gillespie, the much admired British sculptor, known for her figurative and haunting works made from plaster, bronze and natural materials.
It was a revelatory experience to share the space with her, and mount a substantial show of over 40 artworks in the Gallery on Cork Street, a double fronted slightly brutalist space, which is now home to Messums.
Work in situ
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Link here to view the magazine ⟶
Chuck Elliott's incandescent digital abstractions have become increasingly collectible over the last five years. Louise Copping makes a studio visit to discover how they're made, and what drives the project.
LC I know from our work together that you see your drawing process as experimental rather than goal driven. Can you explain that a bit further?
CE To date, none of my pieces have been goal driven, there isn’t a predetermined image that I’m trying to capture. In place of the traditional ‘goal’ is an experimental drawing process in which new forms are drawn, sculpted, manipulated, glazed, lit, and rendered. A kind of abstract sculptural environment within which views or images become apparent as the process resolves itself.
Some of the drawings remain incomplete as a result, in some way failing to deliver a cohesive image or solution to the parameters I’ve set, and subsequently never see the light of day. But those that do fly are imbued with a density of interest and completeness that I feel validates them in a way that wouldn’t happen if I were using more traditional media.
LC You use terms such as ‘liquid geometry’, ‘captured light’, and ‘brilliant incandescence’ to describe your practice. Can you expand on these phrases?
CE I guess they’re a kind of linguistic shorthand, to sum up the core of what I’m going for at the moment. Digital drawing systems allow you to create dense sculptural forms that haven’t previously been possible.
Geometries can be far more complex than they could even ten years ago. Zaha Hadid’s practice, for instance, is a textbook example of how technology is changing the way we can explore form. Studying glass making, I became aware that Dale Chihuly, for example, creates a colour and kinetic interaction with light in his work, that I’m definitely keen to evoke.
So trying to capture some of that effervescence and brilliance, by exploring light and colour densities, and embedding that drama in the work, is a key part of the process...
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Link here to read the full interview ⟶
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In conversation with Louise Copping, originally published by Art of England magazine as part of their cover feature 'Fluid Dynamic, Chuck Elliott and the Transistor Project'. Art of England, Issue 60, August 2009
Invitation and flyer
Link to exhibited works
Lumen / black ghost
