Sensitive Teeth

BACKGROUND Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism And Its Echoes traces the beginnings, development and influence of Surrealism in Australia. Ellis is recognized as a leading contemporary surrealist artist with work that explicitly utilizes surrealist research techniques and concepts. In particular he has employed a range of approaches to engage automatic, irrational and chance processes in art making. The commissioned work 'Sensitive Teeth" investigates how surrealist psychic automatic concepts and techniques developed in the 1920's, can be employed specifically in large-scale contemporary wall painting. CONTRIBUTION Ellis's contribution focuses on the use of psychic automatism as a research method to produce artworks. Using automatic drawing without pre conceived idea is central to surrealist conceptual investigation and Ellis's research extends and tests its potential for direct application as wall painting in a contemporary context. This is the first directly painted site-specific work Ellis has created in a State Gallery and presents new possibilities for future works reflecting this complexity and scale. The potential for large-scale wall painting to be generated without the loss of lyricism and spontaneity evident in preliminary small-scale form is also a key outcome for further research. SIGNIFICANCE This is the first National Gallery exhibition of current and historical Australian Surrealism and its impact. NGV Director, Tony Elwood invited Ellis to participate and the curatorial team led by Max Delany, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and including Simon Maidment, Curator Contemporary Art selected 80 works by Ellis including the commissioned wall painting 'Sensitive Teeth'. The exhibition catalogue includes texts by Ellis, alongside other exhibiting artists Barry Humphries, James Gleeson, and Rosslynd Piggott. Ellis's work was reviewed in The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Weekly Review, Time Out, Herald Sun, and ABC Radio National Books & Arts