ELLIOT FOX
IDOL HANDS
IDOL HANDS PUBLICATION ∙ FOOLCAP EDITIONS ∙ SEPTEMBER 2020 ∙ LONDON
Idol Hands presents a wealth of source and visual references, alongside original drawings from the artist’s unique and expanded narrative of imagery stemming from alternative means of communication such as braille, morse code and sign language. The publication formed a part of the installation of Elliot's solo exhibition at Platform Southwark, that introduced the natural to act as an organic antithesis to his industrial influences. Idol Hands features an essay from writer and curator Charlie Mills that explores the history and societal influence of dance music and rave culture, a subculture that features prominently in Elliot’s continued artistic investigation of Britain’s post-industrial history.
Raving couldn’t be further from ideas of escapism or exteriority. It’s about making connections. A drive—not only to access but to be accessed. Raving is a network—of serotonin, mud-caked trainers, sub-atomic bass-waves and gnashing jaws. It is neither human nor unhuman, organic or inorganic. It’s as much about wanting to embed ourselves in the rhythm of ‘Nature’ as it is allowing flows of all kinds—electronic, electromagnetic, interpersonal, organic, chemical, pharmaceutical—to enter us, through us, and into the next. The shrink-wrapped subjectivity that we covet so dearly almost floats around outside of oneself, endlessly warped and permeable to the collective flows of rave’s ecological highs. Frightened, as we all are, of the insidious poverty of our day-to-day ‘reality’, raving is a mode of being which is always-already more-than-one. It is the realisation that what we take for ‘Nature’ and ‘human’ are spectral qualities, effervescent and irreducible, glittering with porous borders and affective flows. Cogs in the machine of posthuman becoming.
From ‘Raving Without Nature’ by Charlie Mills for Idol Hands publication.
Idol Hands is finished with a silkscreen printed cover using reflective ink and is available in either a red or blue colourway.
Idol Hands is available to buy through Foolscap Editions
ELLIOT FOX