Eelus & The Colour Out Of Space

08.02.10

In 2008 The Electrik Sheep welcomed Eelus into the flock and its fair to say it’s been a rollercoaster of a ride ever since. I’m glad to say Breaksof10 have been there every step of the way. With a Solo show in London on the 26^th of this month and a full-scale street art mobilisation towards Gambia confirmed it seems fitting we send our well wishes and support. All show details can be found at www.eelus.com and we have some behind the scenes snaps to wet your appetite.

So, a new show, a new direction?
Well there’s a good mixture of stuff in the show. There are what you would call some ‘classic’ Eelus imagery and there’s also some new directions. I wanted to introduce more colour into my work and start learning more about how colours interact so compared to most of my previous stuff, which is usually very flat and quite minimal in colour, some of the new work has up to 50 colours, each one put down one at a time. It’s a slow process but been a great learning curve and very challenging. I’ve always had an interest in things like sacred geometry too and I started to play around with bold solid shapes back in 2008 with images like ‘Grin & Bareback’ and ‘Keep on Keepin’ on’ but I felt I wasn’t nailing it or pushing it enough so I always wanted to go back and take another look at producing work that has a contrast of grainy, organic mess alongside sharp, clinical, solid forms.

Any new inspirational occurrences?
Nothing new on this front, just the usual mix of horror and sci-fi related madness. Any bit of spare time is usually spent reading or watching films and mostly everything I do is inspired by this.

Experimenting with any new methods?
As well as using the usual hand cut stencils, for some of the new pieces I just used a bit of intuition and a lot of masking tape and patience to create the images. You can also see a little more shading than usual, some of the stuff isn’t as flat and graphic as it usually is.

So take us to the Studio. Are we talking about a plush space with mod cons?
My studio is a small, damp, cold, wooden shed at the bottom of what has recently been a snow covered garden. It’s dark, smells a bit but is usually surrounded by foxes who like to keep me company. As for man hours, I’ve been crawling into the shed at around 8:30am every morning and not leaving till around 8pm, quick bit of dinner before hitting the cutting mat until around 1am. So pretty long days but it’s been really enjoyable, really challenging.

Five words to describe the new show…
THE…COLOUR…OUT…OF…SPACE

If this was in movie land what music would accompany the open sequence and the end credits?
Ha, awesome question. Well I guess these 2 choices are more of a reflection on the emotional side of the production and build up to the show. This is the first London show I’ve ever done and I’m organizing and funding everything myself without the help of a gallery so it’s been pretty intense. Feel like I’ve been building up to this ever since I really got into stenciling which was around 8 years ago. SO, the opening credits would be Sprach Zarathustra which is the main opening theme to 2001 A Space Odyssey. The music is slow to start, quiet, drawing you in, before exploding into noise, really satisfying (if you’re a nerd). I absolutely love it and to me I guess it would sum up my journey up to this point. The closing credits would be something from the Predator soundtrack by the legend Alan Silvestri. When Arnie is being lifted out of the jungle at the end of the film, knackered, covered in shit, almost dead, I reckon that’s how I’m gonna feel after the show is finished.

Good luck mate. See you in London on the 25^th.