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Grey Area Books is committed to producing publicatons concerned with margins and the outsider, the outsider here being both the subject (artist) and/or the subject of the work. The first project was the publication of a long interview with British artist Hannah Collins, in which she discussed for the first time her personal history, putting into context the origins of her own practises preoccupations.
Whereas Hannah Collins is a very established, heavy-weight artist who deals with the margins and marginal things and people, the second project is with a quite different artist. Robert Ellis is himself, quite despite himself, an outsider. The publications working title is 'The Green Triangle or The Autobiography of Robert Ellis'. Robert has been through an art education in the UK, studying at the Royal College of Art at its old Exhibition Road site in the 1970's, and has been working as a civil servant all his adult life since then. During his art education he found that he was only really productive when finding ways to function outside of its institution. During his working life he has quietly pushed paper around by day, whilst in the evening and at weekends has produced an ongoing body of texts, drawings and watercolours. He has exhibited relatively regularly in the UK and abroad. He has also collaborated on performances and readings of his own writing as well as that of others. The publication has been developped from what began life as a Modern European Philosophy evening course essay and became, to quote Robert, īmore of an autobiography'. It will incorporate his drawings (some made on diary pages, others on plain paper), collages, early writings and also a highly subjective edit of his Curriculum Vitae.
To mention a few of his activities in the last ten years, Robert has had solo exhibitions at Beconsfield and Whitechapel Project Space, a two-person show at City Racing, exhibition in a British Council exhibition in Finland and collaborated with performance artist Hayley Newman.
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(above) Robert Ellis (collaboration with Peformance artist Hayley Newman) (Polaroid by Hayley Newman)
