Installations
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Tonnes of carbon produced by the personal transportation of a ‘professional artist’
This graph was first compiled as the central illustration of Harrison’s 2019 book The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint to illustrate the artist’s increasing amount of travel in the years running up to her 2016 project and the dramatic impact it had on reducing her carbon footprint for transport. It was updated in 2020 for display at Edinburgh Art Festival.
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Life Raft
Designed as the final hole of Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, Life Raft – a scale map of the UK floating in the adjacent canal – offers a safe haven to immigrant golf balls that can make the treacherous crossing.
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After the Revolution, Who Will Clean Up the Mess?
An installation / event completely contingent on the result of the Referendum on Scottish Independence on 18 September 2014. The four large confetti cannons installed inside Talbot Rice’s Georgian Gallery would only be detonated in the event of a ‘yes’ vote.
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The Redistribution of Wealth
Installed in Tate Britain’s Historic Collection Room, this piece retells the history of UK government spending on the arts from the birth of the ‘Council for the Encouragement of Music & the Arts’ in 1940, right up to the present day climate of cutbacks.
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Austerity & Anarchy
An installation which employs a spotlight and smoke machine to visualise and explore the correlation between cuts in public spending and instances of mass rioting on the UK’s streets.
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Early Warning Signs
One of Harrison’s contributions to Two Degrees festival in 2011 and now on a life-long tour of UK arts venues. These four signs were designed to mimic those you might find outside a garage or a Bureau de Change. On a mission ‘promote’ climate change, they try hard to grab the attention of passers-by.
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A Brief History of Privatisation
An installation in which the oscillations in UK public service policy over the last century are re-enacted by an inner circle of electric massage chairs under the seedy glow of red, and then blue, neon.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Angel Row Jukebox
An interactive installation commissioned for the closing party of Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham. The Jukebox contained all the UK #1 hits which corresponded with the openings of 254 exhibitions held at the gallery over its lifetime. The audience were asked to punch in the code for the exhibition they first remembered visiting.
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Timelines
For almost five years Harrison documented and recorded information about nearly every aspect of her daily routine. These laborious, demanding and introverted data collecting processes grew ever more extreme until she devised the ultimate challenge for Timelines – to attempt to document everything she did, 24 hours a day, for four whole weeks (26 June – 23 July 2006).
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Daily Data Display Room
For the duration of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition at Danielle Arnaud contemporary art in London, Ellie collected information about 10 elements of her everyday routine. Each morning the results from the previous day were emailed to the gallery and used to reconfigure and adjust the 10 different objects comprising the installation. Over the course of the exhibition, the display aimed to test and visualise an experiment as to whether there was a correlation between different elements of this information.
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Daily Data Display Wall
For the duration of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition in Nottingham and Portsmouth, Harrison collected data about 20 different elements of her daily life onto Daily Data Log sheets. Each morning the Log Sheet results were emailed to the gallery and used to reconfigure the 20 different items in the installation, so that it took on a slightly different appearance each day of the exhibition.
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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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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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Mass = Energy = Time
This kinetic installation uses two found weight mechanism clocks. The lead weights which are normally used to power the clocks have been removed and replaced by foods (bread and bananas) of the same mass. The clocks continue to work as normal – powered by the gravitational potential energy inherent in the foods. Originally installed at Goldsmiths College in 2002 and then at the Colony in Birmingham in 2004.
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TicTac Typing & Peanut Typing
This installation features two Mac computer programmes made during the LabCulture digital arts residency in 2002. The programmes mimic the common typing test, but rather than telling you your speed or accuracy, they inform you of the equivalent number of TicTacs or peanuts you are burning off whilst typing. Bowls of TicTacs and peanuts are installed alongside the two Macs for hungry participants.
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Potential Generator
Created in 2001 for Harrison’s Degree Show at Nottingham Trent University, this kinetic sculpture is designed to give gravitational potential energy to apples. Apples are placed on the escalator device at the rear of the bike and, when pedalled, are transported to a height above the ground proportional to their chemical energy content. A similar, proportionally larger, Potential Generator for doughnuts was also designed.