Today we’d like to introduce you to Elle Gillette

Hi Elle, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I started my ‘arts’ career by drawing characters from online forums in exchange for digital currencies. I set up ‘shops’ that charged users based on how much of their character I’d draw (e.g., a bust, headshot, or full body). I was about 9 or 10 when I started this. My parents gave me a Wacom tablet one Christmas, and then I moved on from scanning drawings to digital drawings. I went to uni for animation, and then my masters program for fine arts. I’ve always been drawn to the arts ever since I was little I would write in my “what I want to be when I’m older” as an artist. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted to be. Now I’m in a transitionary space in my career where I have started my business Flush, and am applying for a PhD to continue my research based practice.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

It has not been a smooth road whatsoever. Health struggles along the way, money troubles, relationships falling away, moving away from friends, and constantly doubting your place as an artist makes the journey quite hard actually. I think since the field is so competitive it is very easy for you to get inside your head and tell yourself that you’re not good enough to be ‘here.’ A lot of being an artist is constant rejection, a lack of stability and a clear path. It does keep you inspired though.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

I am an interdisciplinary artist and technologist. As for my current interests, I want to explore the dichotomy between growing social connection and longstanding isolation. People are looking at screens more than surfaces like paper, canvas, and fabric; while technology continues to expand, analogue processes diminish. Reality becomes less fascinating. Virtual replaces materiality. Dissociation is abundant. Within my practice, the idea of using already formed images or icons, alongside drawn images, fragments of quotes, or text draws attention to iconography that may initially be dismissed. I aim to create underlying commentary or semiotics from these images. By replicating, reproducing, and degrading a known image until its original meaning has been distorted, I aim to emphasize the process of burning these images into a canvas, a video, a piece of paper, or another surface rather than the body of work itself. The best way to convey a message is to create a body of work that can both be seen in real space and posted online into cyberspace—a process of replication. Combining printmaking, an ancient practice marked by tradition, with the idea of kinetics, video, computing, and technology is the essence of my practice. I very much want to adhere to Marcel Duchamp’s premise that works of art are intermediaries in a process that the artist begins and the viewer completes. Some of the artists that influence or continue to influence my body of work are Bill Viola, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Nam June Paik, and Sarah Sze.

My practice involves formulating labyrinths, which are defined as extended spaces created by the presence and overuse of the Internet. I experiment with digital media in conjunction with traditional media and use them as a method of representation of this disintegration of conventional society and the deterioration of materiality in the real world. Their practice becomes an experimentation between the relationship between a body physically that is breaking down and how that can be visualized through layers or screens.

I am most proud of my ability to preservere even though at times I really wanna pack the kit up and leave. Nothing worth doing is easy.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?

Resilience. I believe it is crucial for anyone in the arts to have as you will be rejected over and over again, and you have to decide to pick up the brush again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ellegillette.neocities.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elle_gillette/
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/gabrielle-gillette

Image Credits

all images belong to elle gillette