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| Featured: February 2008 | hillary ellis | |
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Many anthropologists and psychologists believe that there is a basic human need for ritual, so that as religious beliefs begin to die out, other rituals are developed to take their place. Repetition is an important element of ritual and it is the conscious and systematic repetition of certain actions that turn them into rituals.
The repetition and layering Ellis uses in order to build up surfaces, in a long drawn our process, one on top of the other , is a ritualized behaviour verging on the obsessional. Indeed, Freud believed that there was only a fine line between the ritual behaviour of the pious and the obsessional behaviour of neurotics. This 'outsider' behaviour is perhaps also reflected in her frequent use of everyday objects as mark-making tools - chips forks, coffee stirrers, staples, sticks and stones .
In this process-orientated work Ellis says
'there is often no underlying concept or idea. In this kind of work, the labour is its point. The process of obsession driven work is open-ended - there is no logical stopping point - the decision to stop has nothing to do with finishing the piece - it can only be a random choice.'
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