year-long
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The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint
On 4 November 2019, Luath Press published Harrison’s first book. Inspired by her 2016 ‘durational performance’ The Glasgow Effect – for which she refused to travel beyond Glasgow’s city limits, or use any vehicles except her bike, for the whole calendar year – the book provides the complete context for her thinking and action. (Word count: 119,000)
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People Powered Money
From March 2016 – March 2017, Harrison worked as part of the ‘Glasgow Pound Working Group’, to explore possibilities for developing a citywide community currency to serve the people of Glasgow and build a stronger local economy.
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The Glasgow Effect
The Glasgow Effect was a multi-layered ‘research project‘, which took place in 2016. Its central provocation was that Harrison would refuse to travel beyond Glasgow’s city limits, or use any vehicles except her bike, for a whole calendar year (1 January – 31 December 2016). On 8 January 2017, she gave a talk about the work at the Glasgow Film Theatre. On 4 November 2019, she published a book providing the complete context for her thinking and action.
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Ellie & Oliver Show
For a whole year, artists, friends and flatmates Ellie Harrison & Oliver Braid worked together to broadcast a weekly radio show LIVE from their flat in Glasgow (and from a variety of special locations across the UK and Ireland including Edinburgh Art Festival and Glasgow International).
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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 -
Know Your Thinkers & Theorists
Not strictly an installation, but more the by-product of a year-long research project for which, as part as her self-improvement programme, Harrison attempted to teach herself an overview of the chronology of Western philosophy and critical theory from 800 BC to the present. She hoped to retain this newly acquired information by designing an easy-to-read, quick reference, colour-coded wall chart for her studio wall.
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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.
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Swear Box 2005
Throughout 2005, Harrison recorded every sentence that she uttered which contained a swear word. These sentences were uploaded to the online Swear Box at regular intervals over the course of the year, alongside a summary of the reason for the outburst. The work involved in updating the online Swear Box had a similar effect to the more traditional version of the box, in that Harrison only swore on 142 occasions the entire year which was considerably less than the 2,427 she did during her Daily Quantification Records project in 2003.
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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.
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The Monthly Sculptures Determined by the Daily Quantification Records
Throughout 2003, Harrison also collected data about 14 different elements of her everyday life onto Daily Quantification Records. Each month this data was converted into a set of averages, which was then applied to a set of scales and systems to output the specifications for a monthly sculpture. The first six months’ worth of sculptures was installed at the 2003 Goldsmiths Postgraduate Degree Show.
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Statistics Are Hot Air
This colour-coded vinyl bar chart visualises the exact quantity of gaseous emissions Harrison produced daily throughout 2003. Originally created in 2003 as a studio based wall chart exploring the notion of ‘artistic output’, for which Harrison added one bar to the chart each day. In 2007 the completed chart was installed as semi-permanent installation on glass at Birmingham Moor Street Station as part the New Art Birmingham exhibition Ariston. There is also an online version of the chart.
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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. In 2007, Eat 22 was acquired by the Wellcome Collection in London.
Project website