Husband and wife Stuart and Michelle Elliott exhibit together in a show not to be missed. Although different in appearance, their work has many shared motifs and icons, such as fetishes and objects of desire. The title of their exhibition, Veneers, refers to the deceptive surfaces of places and people, what we disguise using lipstick, lies and laminex.

Both artists are producing sculptural objects and paintings. Michelle is producing an exciting new range of works, several based on the indispensable female purse. She gives new lives to these consumer icons, sometimes reinterpreting as a fetish object and in others physically reconstructing them to produce something beautiful but ultimately useless. Also included, by Michelle, will be three dimensional fabric ‘trilobites’ and airbrushed panels.

Michelle has written about her work, “Facades. Deceptive surfaces. …The banal urban membrane harbouring the seductive and/or the unspeakable. Wet slippery things behind the wood panelling, pallid, dormant chrysalis behind the bathroom cupboard. …the jagged interior of a glossy hand bag, a tool box full of fetishes. … Low cal torte, skinny de-caf, mock cream.”

Michelle has been working on several commissions and public art projects in recent years, often working with children or communities. She has been involved in many high profile group exhibitions, such as the 1997 Perspecta at SH Ervin Gallery Sydney, as well as curating and co-curating exhibitions. Her work can be found in several prominent collections such as the Kerry Stokes Collection and Edith Cowan University.

Stuart Elliott is exhibiting a combination of paintings and sculptural installations, creating industrial and suburban icons in his self described ‘fakeology’ artworks. His work references heavily built up urban areas, complete with billboards, with titles like Eastbrook and Tank houses. Dark, mysterious, brooding, weathered, industrial gothic, are all words that help describe his work. Also included will be a series of ‘fleshy, meaty’ paintings titled Must haves, based on collages of fashion accessories. There is certainly a dark sense of humour pervading these works, as there is in his portrait paintings with titles such as Those who hit things with sticks, (sporting heroes of course!), Those who face south and press their sternum and Those who make noise. Stuart’s work addresses world history and our society as well as a healthy dose of fiction.

He has written of his new work:
“Veneers, distant urban descendant of the Victorian Parlour; that closed, ruthless and affluent place where, momentarily, science and magic, cruelty and altruism, caprice and hierarchy, etiquette and perversion coexisted. …But even in January, in Wundowie, under the laminex, in the corroded panels of long abandoned cars, the acrid smell of that ancient mist can still catch at the throat, its thrill quicken one’s step past streak-walled derelict house and twitching curtain skein. Or freeze one, paralysed by overheard grunts and scraping through a motel’s splintered, powder blue door.”

Well known local art critic and author David Bromfield is currently writing a book on Stuart Elliott’s work, to be published in 2003. Stuart’s artworks can be found in many important collections: the Art Gallery of WA, Holmes a Court Collection, Curtin University, Sanyi Museum Taiwan ROC, University of WA, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University, Kerry Stokes and Bankwest.

*prices valid 2002