Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Percy Miller Gallery, London
5 September – 10 October
Reviewed by: Roy Exley
One senses an aberrant enthusiasm in the work of Tom Ellis: his subject matter refers to the rarefied worlds of the modelling enthusiast, particularly that one where the scaled-down simulation of old railways is painstakingly undertaken. We struggle to make sense of the thrill created by electrically propelled models of steam engines trundling around stunted landscapes that consist of a scattering of perfectly formed frozen moments that never existed. In contrast, it's good to know that we don't really have to make sense of Ellis' dysfunctional constructions. Either he isn't really trying, or he is trying hard to be obtuse; whichever is the case, there is first class imagination-stretching material to get to grips with here.
Ellis takes two approaches to his 'modeller's nightmare' fantasy worlds: in one approach he scratch-builds irrational, while obliquely architectural, models out of MDF, polystyrene and PVA. Dead Hotel, after which the show is named, is a structurally complex edifice that seems to be inverted (if it's supine it must be dead?), but it could equally be a dead multi-storey car park or a dead seaweed-drying rack. Ellis is asking us to engage our imaginations in overdrive. His other approach is to use the modelling materials themselves, but in a way that contravenes any instructions that might have accompanied them. St Catharine's Chapel consists of two sets of subway stairs at HO scale, assembled together on end to create a diminutive Dutch gabled roof above cage-like walls, a chapel at which you can smile but not worship. Ellis' anarchic interventions in the modelling process create unlikely structures whose parodies and abominations seem to question the relevance of spending time creating an authenticity in miniature in which the imagination can only be trapped and ossified.
Writer detail:
Roy Exley
Venue detail:
Percy Miller Gallery
39 Snowsfields, LONDON SE1 3SU
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