PROVENANCE
Paul & Kerry Barber Collection Contemporary & Traditional New Zealand & European Art, International Art Centre 26/07/2001

There has arguably never been a better time than now to consider Robert Ellis' Motorway series anew. If art is capable of functioning as a mirror to our anxieties and preoccupations, it feels as though Ellis' semiapocalyptic motorways are just as relevant (if not more so) today as they were in the 60s and 70s. To be absorbed in this painting is to undergo something of a contradictory experience, because it is both microscopically intricate and dizzyingly vast. On the one hand, it challenges us to marvel at the minutiae of our biology. Because there is such a cellular quality to the painted surface of the work, we draw into ourselves and feel the racing of our own pulse in this painting. At the same time, it is named "motorway", and has the giddy sense of a sprawling, speeding cityscape. More than anything, Motorway / City No. 22 is selfdocumentary - it records Ellis' analytical process as an artist and anthropologist. Through the observation and collection of land-based data (the earliest iterations of these paintings were based on views of Spanish towns) he took map-based views and landmarks; topographical and infrastructural points, and distorted them into complex essays on urbanity. In the case of Motorway / City No. 22, the finished product is darkly alluring. Characterising a city in flux, it holds the promise and menace of transformation. In the present day, this poses further questions around the collection of big data, our sense of identity and privacy, as well as population and city expansion.