Vending Machine Photograph

Ellie Harrison
Born 1979
London (UK)

Ellie Harrison is an artist based in Glasgow (UK). In 2001 she began to develop an area of practice based on documenting information about her daily routine. Most well known are her projects Eat 22 - for which photographed everything she ate for a year, and Gold Card Adventures - for which she calculated the total distance of a year's worth of travel on public transport (9236 kilometres).

This interest in what she termed the 'data of everyday life' led her to curate the touring exhibition Day-to-Day Data - bringing together a group of 20 artists who shared similar obsessions, but who had developed a variety of creative, and sometimes absurd, ways of visualising the information they collected.

Following an intense five years, in summer 2006 Ellie officially gave up data collecting. As a reaction to the introverted habits of studying one's own life, she has since begun to develop a more collaborative approach to practice. Recent projects include the artist's network Sports Day and the networking event Hen Weekend .

In 2008 she launched Work With Me - an international campaign to find the perfect partner with whom to form a long-term artistic collaboration.

Despite her vow not to undertake any more data collecting activities, she still maintains some ongoing web-based projects: Tea Blog - for which she archives the thought which is most on her mind every time she has a cup of tea, and The Challenge Series - a lifelong attempt to swim the distance across the Atlantic.