BB #5: Stuart Elliot

BLACKBOARD: Stuart Elliot - Object Lesson. At the Blackboard's main site behind the gallery reception an improvised site-specific work has been made by arranging various elements from the artist's studio in order to consider the question of what counts as a tool, support, trace, filter, frame or container.

In a second element, Elliot has executed a ‘reconstruction’ of the information found on another blackboard at SPACE: the one situated adjacent to the reception on the back wall of the media lab. The board has had its original writing erased and rewritten by Elliot in fluorescent chalk.

Finally, a cluster of paintings made by pressing blackboard paint onto canvas laid across and over a factory produced stretcher occupy a wall seldom used in exhibitions at SPACE: the corridor between the Gallery and the Annexe.

The declarative, informational and pedagogic nature of the idea of a blackboard has led Elliot to produce a project concerned with critical designation. What registers as an entity or object of our critical attention? How does it become such a thing? What tool or support – both physical and theoretical – is required so a critical designation gains gravity?

These questions – which relate to the idea of apprehending an object’s coherence while nonetheless trying to bear in mind how things could have been otherwise – are here inflected by strategies normally peripheral to Elliot’s practice.

Stuart Elliot was born in 1977. He lives and works in London. He has presented solo exhibitions at SEVENTEEN (2011) and Dicksmith Gallery (2009)

The BLACKBOARD is a project involving artists who have a studio with SPACE. For each exhibition cycle a SPACE studio artist will be invited to make an intervention on a blackboard hung behind the front desk of the Triangle building. Previous contributors include Modern Activity, Vicky Wright, Banner Repeater and Peter Kennard. Following Stuart Elliot will be a Blackboard project by Patrick Staff.

Public exhibition opening - Thursday January 19th, 6-9pm. All welcome.