Elliot Collins: Held Together
05 March 2011 - 19 June 2011
Auckland based artist Elliot Collins has become known for creating thought provoking paintings featuring whimsical phrases imbedded within abstract colour fields. In such works Collins uses phrases, often gleaned from daily conversations and observations, to create poetic reflections on art and life.
For the Te Tuhi Drawing Wall, Collins makes a significant new development on his earlier work by creating a collaborative wall drawing. Using coloured string rather than paint, Collins will invite a number of different community groups to literally tie together the phrase "The World is held together so thinly". The phrase suggests that human society is based upon fragile systems such as political governance, the economy, urban infrastructure or the natural environment. However, like all language the phrase holds a raft of assumptions that are open to interpretation. In this sense, by inviting interaction Collins allows the possibility for the phrase to take on new complex meanings - as the work is re-drawn from different collective and individual perspectives.
