Lucy Ellis collects “scrap” digital and analogue materials, fusing them into experimental animations

Lucy Ellis’ animations are pretty strange – but it’s exactly this strangeness that makes them so engrossing. Looping images of walking, hopping bodies with enlarged heads (or maybe even a TV in replacement of a head), flashing patterns and shapes that morph before your mind can fully address them, or simply the repeated image of a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, for some reason, it’s hard to pull your eyes away. There’s an offbeat humour that runs throughout Lucy’s animations, and a distinct 1990s and early 2000s feeling suggested in the grainy DIY form and glitchy animation, as well as in more direct reference too, with the use of early tech visuals – like Nokia phones and overlapping computer windows. In terms of other artists that inspire Lucy’s work, the list includes the animators Run Wrake and Jan Svankmajer, as well as digital artists Francois Gamma and Cory Arcangel.

So, how does she create them? The key seems to be her collecting of what she calls “scrap materials”, which she then weaves together to “create new narratives”. She continues: “The use of scrap materials reflects on the idea of physical materials having life embedded into them from the roots of where they’re from, to the physical conditions they have endured. This life is expressed through the texture on their surfaces.” Much of Lucy’s work interrogates contrasts, like digital versus analogue, “this includes the crossovers between the two through process, materiality and how humans connect with both”. This can involve experiments like transferring her digital animations to VHS, adding “glitches and grain [...] where the tape has been rewound and rewatched”. Or, more recently, Lucy has been exploring how she can present digital work with physical screens, like her series of animals walking between small DIY screens to the screen of a Nokia, their pixelated appearance akin to old-school games, like Minesweeper and Snake.