Theo Ellison

Theo Ellison is an artist fascinated with the uneasy relationship between Romanticism and scientific rationalism. Within that framework he playfully turns to video and computer-generated imagery to explore artificiality within image-making, often drawing parallels with the courtship behaviour of birds. Romanticism’s ideals of nature and the notion of human subjectivity feeds into his interest in evolutionary psychology – a branch of psychology that aims to understand how evolution and sexual desire has shaped our mind and behaviour. Ellison’s work is focused on the consequences of mapping the theory onto image-making and art-making and how it may shift perceptions. Furthermore, Ellison’s works possess a unique aesthetic that conjures feelings of uncanniness, abjection, and seductiveness – caused not only by the media that he privileges but also the artist’s perspectives on his own surroundings.