Stephen Ellis

Lamp Black is a carbon black traditionally produced by collecting soot from oil lamps. Ellis enjoys the contradiction in its name: we think of a lamp as producing light, not something black – or can it? Crude oil and coal – the dark icons of fossil fuels – still power...

Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Unfolding by Stephen Ellis. The exhibition will feature a suite of six drawings by the artist, which are part of his ongoing project exploring themes of environmental degradation and climate change. Each of the drawings will be coloured pencil on paper, 300mm square....

Ellis took the opportunity of the pandemic to teach himself the basics of 3D modelling software to make and pose virtual objects on virtual tabletops – a process that renders the familiar unfamiliar, reflecting pandemic isolations, remembered liberties outside. The intangible functionless objects stand in for the thing army that...

The Still Life images refer to the iconography of war movies, war comics and war reportage; at the same time the diminution of scale and the use of toy soldiers and kitchen containers, speaks to the invasion of safe spaces and the impact of war service on home and family....

Robert FitzRoy was New Zealand’s second Governor. He had been the captain of Darwin’s Beagle and went on to found the British Meteorological Office. His life’s work was the prediction of storms and the protection of shipping and seafarers from their destructive force. To that end he invented the weather...

Stephen Ellis’ newest body of work Headforemost is a suite of four large scale, intricate ball point pen drawings that capture and comment on local history. Ellis’ works are awe inspiring. With a commitment to both process and the research grounding the work, he layers meaning and technique to create...

In his latest body of work, Opposite Shore, Ellis refers to various migrations across the seas, including those of environmental refugees and his own family’s passage from Scotland and Ireland to New Zealand in search of a new home. A key example from this suite is Standing Off (2017), where...

The utilitarian writing device known as the ‘ball-point pen’ is the medium used by school children in 1B4 exercise books, of crossword warriors and doodlers by the telephone; it’s the people’s most familiar mark-making tool. Amidst the broad array of high art media, the 21st century boasts some of the...