#elly thomas

You create sculpture and drawings, which use childhood play as set of paradigms to inform adult creative practice. How did you come to be so interested in this line of enquiry?

It was while I was enjoying working with children on an art project that I began noticing parallels between the way the children spoke about their work and my own ongoing concerns. Namely, at its most basic, we were concerned with transforming matter into something that seemed animate, that seemed to have a life of its own beyond one’s control, much as the way one would think about one’s toys as a child. So not representing something, but inventing - regarding a drawing or sculpture almost as a living thing, as a thing in itself.

I thought perhaps this space for play continued into adult life. I didn’t need to pretend to be a child again. How could I? It would only produce some sort of faux naivety. Instead I wondered whether I could learn from the children in a way that could be applicable to my own ongoing concerns, through a focus on animism and its expression through play methods, processes and objectives (rather than aesthetics).

Elly Thomas, ‘Kits and Building Blocks- Stage 1’, 2016. A collection of sculptures and found objects used as a kit of forms with which to improvise and experiment during a solo show at ASC Gallery. Mid-show the installation was dismantled and reconfigured. Papier-mâché, silicone and found objects. Image courtesy of the artist.

You create 'kits' of forms, which can then be assembled freely into a multitude of further configurations. What is it about this performative and non-static form of object creation that is so important to you?

This follows on directly from an animistic engagement with material. This particular form of engagement with matter had suggested that the landscape of play continues to age, evolve and develop throughout adult life. From here I asked ‘How can one treat sculpture and drawing as if they’re ‘toys’ as much as ‘art?’ So getting away from thinking in terms of a finished object or working towards a pre-visualised image, but instead finding a range of ways to experiment with these objects to see what they do, rather than the making existing as an end itself. So for me, making objects is just stage one. After this they become toys that are allowed to ‘live’ through endless reconfiguration. 

The objects you make take on biomorphic forms, and seem to me to be suggestive of the domestic. Does this reading of them ring true?

It’s less about the domestic and more about the world of mass production set against the biological world. I’m interested in confusions between the two realms. This exists in childhood (after all what is a toy if not a man-made object that is confused with the living world), and in fact the pioneering child psychologist Jean Piaget asserted that children are often unable to distinguish between the mechanical and the biological – for children where there is movement there is life.

Elly Thomas, ‘Kits and Building Blocks- Stage 1’, 2016. Papier-mâché, silicone and found objects. Image courtesy of the artist.

I explore this confusion through parallels between the biological and manmade that centre on the functional – on engineering, living systems and potentially infinite structures comprised of a simple series of building blocks. This focuses on repetition and symmetry in the world of mass production as opposed to organic repetition (where no repeated form is identical) and organic asymmetry (anything that grows will inevitably be asymmetric). 

However, I think you have hit on something about the domestic and the biomorphic, because both my parents are biologists and on the walls of my childhood home there were many reproductions of images from D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s book ‘On Growth and Form’. The landscape of childhood would seem to be re-emerging again! So, as is often the case, other people are able to see what you’re doing more clearly than you are yourself! 

Elly Thomas, ‘Kits and Building Blocks- Stage 1’, 2016. Papier-mâché, silicone and found objects. Image courtesy of the artist.

What is your approach when initially coming to make these forms? How much do traditional considerations of form, material, texture and colour influence the outcome?

Everything comes from collecting. I collect images, objects and junk with no idea how things are going to come together (play is by definition open-ended). I’m also continually sketching, but allow myself to forget the source material the images are based on. This drift allows the forms to gain an independent identity, rather than be left locked in the world of representation. When it comes to moving the forms beyond the sketchbook and into sculpture I choose materials that will force time and change to be built into the process. I want the resulting forms to have ‘grown’ through a response to gravity and changing conditions. The sculptures then exist in physical time - time as layering, stacking and etching.

Elly Thomas, ‘Kits and Building Blocks- Stage 2’, 2016. Papier-mâché, silicone and found objects. Image courtesy of the artist.

You have written extensively about the  practices of Philip Guston and Eduardo Paolozzi. You have a forthcoming book for Routledge titled, 'Play and the Artist’s Creative Process: The Work of Eduardo Paolozzi and Philip Guston'. What is it about their individual practices that so interests you? How much influence has your research into their working methods had on your own?

I was initially drawn to their work through their particular relationship with popular culture. Both artists seemed to have engaged with pop culture in a way that didn’t seem to fit into existing art historical labels (even if Eduardo Paolozzi is often described as the Father of British Pop Art, an epithet he first courted and then dismissed). 

I began making comparisons between the cultural landscape of their individual childhoods and the work they made during artistic maturity. In the case of Paolozzi one could see a striking connection to toys that would have been available to him as a child, with Guston there is obviously a connection to the comic strips he loved as a boy. But more significantly, as I dug deeper I began to discover that both artists had a recurrent interest in animism and a need for the unexpected outcome. 

From here I began to explore their studio methods and processes through the lens of play. Both artists have made a big impact on my work in terms of expanding the possibilities for play within a studio environment. Paolozzi and Guston were endlessly experimenting; they offer artists a vast tool kit of methods that allow one to reconnect with the landscape of play.

Elly Thomas, ‘Kits and Building Blocks- Stage 2’, 2016. Papier-mâché, silicone and found objects. Image courtesy of the artist.

Your sculptural work has recently been transformed into a 2D, static image for London Arts Board. It is an unexpected and intriguing departure for this facet of your output, transposing its normal mutability into something fixed, especially considering drawing seems to be such an integral element of your practice. How did this come about?

The London Arts Board is an innovative public arts project founded and run by Liberty Rowley on a notice board on Peckham Road. In the current climate with drastic cuts to arts funding and creativity and play pushed to the margins of the school curriculum, public art seems more important than ever. I think in many ways the ‘where’ is the most urgent political question for art – how one makes space to assure that access to the arts is available for everyone.

As to the static nature of my new work – I don’t see the piece as finalised, in a sense it’s on pause until the sculpture elements are reconfigured. In fact I’ve already been playing with different combinations of the elements in my studio. Philip Guston described his paintings as ‘pauses’ and imagined all his paintings as one work. I find that a very potent idea.

Elly Thomas, ‘Kits and Building Blocks- Stage 2’, 2016. Papier-mâché, silicone and found objects. Image courtesy of the artist.

What have you got coming up?

In mid-February an Eduardo Paolozzi retrospective opens at The Whitechapel Gallery. I’ve been working on the catalogue both as a contributing author and researcher. I’ll also appear in a short film discussing Paolozzi’s print suite General Dynamic F.U.N.  

Interview by Charlotte Barnard.

You can see Elly’s work for London Arts Board online at http://londonartsboard.blogspot.co.uk/

You can also see it in person at the corner of Peckham Road and Vestry Road, Camberwell, London.