Tim Ellis

Tim Ellis (b. 1981, Chester) is an artist and designer living and working in London, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in 2009.

Tim Ellis’ work is concerned with the abstraction of found imagery, and the shift of meaning through materials and techniques. He transforms his conducted research on cultural products into totemic sculptures and paintings.

Tim Ellis’s unique approach to art-making crafts a ubiquitous logic from the haphazard and coincidental. By drawing mental and tactile relations between materials and subtly altering their forms, Ellis highlights a sensitive interlacing between artifice and natural order. In Ellis’s work found objects such as plates, vases, and Christmas tree ornaments are reconfigured to become assemblages of totemic significance. His practice revolves around his idea that “a being has a primaeval desire to want to belong to something greater than oneself. This ‘wanting to belong’ manifests itself in both the production and consumption of cultural artefacts. Whether in isolation or as a collection, artefacts are dependent on a creator, mediator and audience.

About the available paintings:

The paintings are part of an ongoing series that share the same title, 'United in Different Guises' and are numbered accordingly. The title refers to a proposed shared function. This function sits somewhere between a communicative role and the symbolic. The source imagery used is a mixture of signage and design which is reconstructed to form gendered symbols. The paintings' scale and material quality mimic the appearance of flags and banners. By folding, scuffing and gradually ageing the paintings, a suggested utility appears. What is left is an object that questions notions of symbolism and authenticity, allowing the work to function beyond the realms of painting.

Ellis’s new paintings are translations of laser cut collages, of found pop culture stickers that have been intuitively and randomly slotted together in grids. The paintings are created on cotton pillow cases by staining them with an orange acrylic base coat and applying 6 layers of acrylic paint in various colours. The reverse side is painted with acrylic primer for stiffness. After completion, they are folded, scuffed, and worn to create a sense of history and age. Finally, thin layers of varnish and lacquer are applied to seal and enhance the work. Ellis likens these paintings to flags or banners: representing themselves both as artworks and symbols.

Recent exhibitions include: ‘How To Make A Head’ at Strange Cargo, Folkestone and The Saatchi Gallery, London, ‘Thirsk Hall Sculpture Park’ at Thirsk, Yorkshire, ‘In Forma’ at Marie Jose Gallery, London, ‘Botanical Orrery Commission Launch’ at Public Sculpture, Hendricks Distillery, Girvan, ‘Mute’ at Ubicua Gallery, London.

He will be presenting new sculptures at the Heath Robinson Museum in 2025. Ellis’s work appears in numerous private collections, including The Glenfiddich Collection, Hendrick Gin and Saatchi Collection.

Collections

The Saatchi Collection, The Glenfiddich Collection, Swiss Life and various public and private collections in Europe, Asia and USA .

Education

2006-09 Post Graduate Diploma Fine Art, The Royal Academy Schools, London.

2000-03 BA (Hons) Fine Art, John Moores, Liverpool.

Latest solo exhibitions

2023 Echoes in the Sky, Pia Ortuno and Tim Ellis, FOLD Gallery, London

2023 Loose Lips...... Sinks Ships, University Centre Hastings, Hastings

2021 In Bloom, JGM Gallery, London

2019 Tomorrow's Harvest, FOLD Gallery, London

2018 Solo Presentation, Art Rotterdam, Van Nelle Fabriek, Rotterdam

2018 Cypher, PAPER Gallery, Manchester