Ellie Harrison
12 March – 2 May
Daily 12 noon – 9pm
Gallery
Ellie Harrison’s practice emerges from her continual attempt to strike-a-balance between the roles of ‘artist’, ‘activist’ and ‘administrator’.

She uses skills and strategies drawn from each of these perspectives to create playful and engaging work, in-and-out of art world contexts, which aims to expose and challenge the systems which control and rule over our lives, be they political, ethical, social, economic, technological or infrastructural.

Her work takes a variety of forms including performance spectacles, interactive installations, collaborative projects, political campaigns, media interventions, websites and coach trips.

This exhibition at Watermans is her first solo show at a gallery in London. It features A Brief History of Privatisation – a major new installation in which the oscillations in public service policy over the last century are re-enacted by an inner circle of electric massage chairs under the seedy glow of red, and then blue, neon.

This is shown alongside two interactive installations developed in 2009 in response to the global financial crises, including Vending Machine – an old vending machine reprogrammed to release free snacks when search terms relating to the economy make the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed.

Ellie Harrison was born in Ealing in 1979. She studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, Goldsmiths College and Glasgow School of Art. She currently lives and works in Glasgow, where she is the coordinator if the Bring Back British Rail campaign, secretary of theArtists’ Lottery Syndicate and a member of the Scottish Artists Union.

www.ellieharrison.com