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Robert Ellis

Motorway/City

Art + Object

Important Paintings & Contemporary Art

9 August 2022

Lot 30


Before widespread use of satellite imagery, NZ based painter Robert Ellis developed his visual language of transport networks viewed from aerial perspective. This approach is likely to have formed in the photographic unit of the Royal Air Force where he was employed after completing art school in 1947. Part of an ongoing series, Motorway/City captures the energy and complexity of modern life through painterly approximation of the night-time light trails of vehicles converging around a central hub. The elevated motorway's painted across the lower half of the composition with sufficient restraint to describe its concrete monumentality. An engineering precision to enable the effortless pivot between local and regional connections. In the decades following completion of this painting, network models have become increasingly familiar. They're used to describe all manner of technological and biological interactions which influence our cognition and physical presence in the world. Auction estimate NZ $26,000 - $35,000.




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