Stephen Ellis, Box Urn Can Can Bottle, 2021. Coloured pencil on Fabriano paper, 56 x 75 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Sanderson Contemporary Art, Auckland.

Stephen Ellis has always posed objects on tabletops to create small worlds for his drawings. Now the pandemic has given the domestic interior and the still life a new significance – the world has become smaller for all of us.

Ellis took the opportunity of the pandemic to teach himself the basics of 3D modelling software to make and pose virtual objects on virtual tabletops – a process that renders the familiar unfamiliar, reflecting pandemic isolations, remembered liberties outside. The intangible functionless objects stand-in for the thing army that supports our lives, the mute democracy of the kitchen cupboard.

Event Opening: Saturday 14 August, 11am – 1pm.

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