Master of Fine Art - Ellie Harrison

Social / Networks

Artists’ Lottery Syndicate

On 1 April 2010, Harrison launched the Artists’ Lottery Syndicate forming a forty-strong collective of UK based artists joining forces to play The National Lottery over the course of a year, with the hope of hitting the jackpot. The Syndicate ran from 1 July 2010 – 1 July 2011 and was a fun and social group activity, which operated as a gentle critique of artists’ relationships to the economy, as well as a potential money-maker.
Project website
Performance / Events

The History of Revolution: Ellie Harrison’s Fireworks Display

Conceived as the sister work to The History of Financial Crises, this performance spectacle is a one-woman attempt to re-enact a chronology of ‘the history of revolution’ over the course of the last 360 years via the medium of pyrotechnics.
Installations

Press Release

Devised specifically for the context of the ‘degree show’. For the final three weeks of her Master of Fine Art course at Glasgow School of Art, Harrison made a conscious decision not to make any ‘work’, in favour of instead transforming her studio into a ‘press office’ and attempting to directly solicit the media coverage which many hope will come as a result of this much anticipated show.
Performance / Events

General Election Drinking Game

An endurance performance devised by Harrison to coincide with the 2010 UK general election. Four ‘players’ represented the main political parties – each attempting to drink one shot of lager for every seat in parliament their party won, live as the results came in throughout the night.
Project website
Performance / Events

Desk Chair Parade

On Sunday 2 August 2009, Ellie Harrison & Adele Prince (Sports Day) staged the inaugural Desk Chair Parade took place in Manchester as part of We are the Champions – Castlefield Gallery’s 25th Anniversary. A group of willing volunteers – office workers, shoppers and gallery goers alike – embarked on a magnificent adventure, freewheeling through the streets on ordinary office chairs.
Political Campaigns

Bring Back British Rail

In 2009, Harrison – the self-professed ‘Che Guevara of trainspotters’ – founded the national Bring Back British Rail campaign to popularise the idea of re-nationalising our public transport system. Now with more than 150,000 supporters across Facebook, Twitter, Riseup and its online petitions, Harrison continues to coordinate the campaign with the help of a small network of volunteers around the UK.
Campaign website
Installations

Toytown

The sister installation to Vending Machine, this piece features a dilapidated 1980s kid’s car ride which starts up and offers people free rides when news relating to the recession makes the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed.
Installations

Vending Machine

An installation for which an old vending machine is reprogrammed to release snacks only when news relating to the recession makes the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed.
Writing

Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector

Harrison edited the first book about her work Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector, published by Plymouth College of Art in April 2009. The book profiles twelve of her former ‘data collecting‘ projects, for which she obsessively recorded information about different aspects of her daily routine. It is introduced by artist and curator Hannah Jones and features a specially commissioned essay by Sally O’Reilly. (Word count: 5,394)
Installations

The History of Financial Crises

An installation in which the turbulent history of capitalism over the last century is re-enacted each day by a row of popcorn making machines.
Installations

Transactions

Developed to accompany The History of Financial Crises installation – for the duration of exhibition, Harrison sent an SMS message to the phone installed in the gallery every time she made an economic transaction. The Coke can dances with joy every time a message is received.

Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.