Press

Excepts from recent reviews:

"In these twilight, techno-seascapes, accumulations of discarded computer monitors and TV screens evoke the cyclic rhythms of destruction and regeneration that define the impermanence of human activity. Elliott’s concern for toxic waste has a double meaning here; the switched-on TV sets transmit pop-culture messages, while simultaneously polluting the ocean with toxic chemicals. In the real world, nature’s capacity to regenerate itself is no longer a given; to a scary extent we see evidence of a planet under siege.

Even worse, hardware is outmoded not only by planned obsolescence, but by fast-paced technological advances that outmode everyone. As age overtakes human beings, we too become passé. Meticulously painted, these images are laden with metaphorical content. Searing yellow and black setting suns symbolize endings, thus perhaps hinting at the pressure people feel to “keep up” by using the new, next and best product. Our society has no time for the old and out of date. The pictures recall generations that have lived past their prime; the old and the new groups coexist, though often separately. Apparently, everything is subject to obsolescence as the new overtakes the present. The discarded monitors, despite their own historical legacy, ironically sustain images of dated political and pop-culture icons. TV screens have long been used to reflect events and to transfer information that is now historic. They are tools that shape the lives of the masses; artificial scenarios viewed on TV often become intertwined with one’s own reality which in turn competes with “Reality TV”.

Elliott’s philosophical paintings comment on the leftovers of technology, the detritus of life, the faults of our history. Their multiplex meanings challenge the viewer to confront images that subvert our collective memory of nature and the sea in particular, as an unspoiled sanctuary. In these scenes of reckless abandoned, the ocean is viewed as a vast dumping ground meant to hide the mess from view, transporting trash of all shapes and sizes out of sight. Visions of transmitters awash in black seas are cinematic and compelling. With sensitively wrought parallel lines, and miniscule particles of swirling matter, the paintings suggest waves of energy. As such, these elements create a simmering backdrop for an ecological apocalypse; there are no reassuring views in sight. The seas’ waves recede toward a distant horizon, and nothing more."

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Although abandoned, Elliott's monitors still display images, in dazzling Day-Glo, as shiny and addictive as new plasma TV screens, signs of life in a seemingly dead environment. They glow with appropriated stills from internet media clips, evidence of our disposable culture, and violent history that hint at the causes of whatever disaster led to these eerie unpopulated landscapes: the military industrial war machine, "American Idol," mushroom clouds, patriotic exhibitionism.

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"Formally evocative of 19th century predecessors like John Martin or J.M.W.
Turner, the seductive luminosity of Elliott's Surge 3 and Phantasm 2 draws 
us into a world in which the material residue of willful human ambition takes
on a nightmarish life of its own, threatening to undermine the so-called 
progress offered by utopian technological imaginings."
           
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"Three paintings by Elliott veer from fantastical to the bleak and
highlight the welcome eccentricity that reverberates through
NightLites. Similar in concept to Nigel Cooke's massive,
post-apocalyptic pieces, these small mixed-media paintings share the
spirit of Philip Guston's later work. Lines scratched into glossy,
black enamel surfaces trace outlines of a city that forms and here and
disintegrates there, marred by course, cement-like patches of polymer
and stippled with cascades of pastel dots forming ephemeral clouds out
of refuse."