solo - Ellie Harrison

Exhibition

I’ve Been Watching You

1 Aug 2007
Showroom, Sheffield
Performance / Events

I’ve Been Watching You

For three-and-a-half years Harrison was ‘undercover artist-in-residence’ at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. Assuming the role of usher, she spent her shifts getting to grips with the inner workings of the cinema and expanding her knowledge of contemporary film. After ‘coming out’ as an artist in 2007, she was asked to present her findings as one of the commissions for the launch of Digital Broadway – the cinema’s new digital arts programme alongside works by Marcus Coates, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie and Annie Watson.
Project website
Social / Networks

The Quotidian Factor

The first collaborative project between Adele Prince and Ellie Harrison was this artists’ workshop based on the popular UK TV series The Krypton Factor. The day-long workshop took place at Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth as part of the ARC programme, which accompanied the Day-to-Day Data exhibition in the gallery. The Quotidian Factor featured a series of four rounds in which participants competed in challenges designed to get them inspired by the little things in life.
Project website
Installations

Gold Card Adventures

For her solo exhibition at Piccadilly Circus Underground Station in 2005, Harrison created a series of 20 large format posters to visualise the data collected during her Gold Card Adventures project, for which she recorded the total distance of every journey she made on London Transport in a year (9,236 kilometres). These posters were used to mark the stages of this cumulative journey by featuring a series of imitation postcards from different global destinations at progressive further distances away from London.
Project website
Installations

Sneezes 2003

Throughout 2003, Harrison recorded the exact date and time of her every sneeze. For this solo exhibition at the Wallner Gallery in Nottingham, she transformed the gallery walls into a giant two-way timeline. Mini colour-coded prints representing each of the 318 sneezes were positioned around the walls to indicate the exact date and time at which they occurred.
Internet / Broadcasts

Eat 22

A year after completing Greed, Harrison began Eat 22 (11 March 2001 – 11 March 2002), her seminal data collecting project. For one year and one day she photographed and recorded information about everything that she ate. Eat 22 is now on permanent display at the Wellcome Collection in London.
Project website

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.

I’ve Been Watching You

1 Aug 2007 Showroom, Sheffield

I’ve Been Watching You

The Quotidian Factor

Gold Card Adventures

Sneezes 2003

Eat 22

1 Aug 2007
Showroom, Sheffield