1 April 2009
a-n Magazine (p.19)

Subscriber Prize: Five copies of Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector by Ellie Harrison to be won, courtesy of Plymouth College of Art Press.

Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector is the first book to be published about the work of Ellie Harrison. It is published to coincide with the artist’s solo exhibition at the Viewpoint Gallery, Plymouth College of Art, 23 April – 30 May.

Ellie Harrison was a ‘data collector’. For over five years she documented and recorded information about nearly every aspect of her daily routine, amassing reams of data in the process. She photographed and catalogued 1,640 meals and snacks for her project Eat 22, and calculated the total distance of a year’s worth of travel on public transport for Gold Card Adventures. But these laborious, demanding and introverted processes took their toll. Something had to give. Ellie had to quit!

Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector documents the process of rehabilitation that followed Harrison’s decision, as she set about coming to terms with her ‘data collecting’ past and beginning to reinvent her role as artist. It features a specially commissioned text by Sally O’Reilly and an introduction by Hannah Jones.