The artistic practice of Sydney-based artist James Ettelson straddles the stylistic spheres of Pointillist mark making, painterly Pop aesthetics and cartographic imagery. His large-scale acrylic works comprise a tapestry of dashes and unbroken lines in a riot of vibrant colours, with recurring motifs of contemporary culture, such as emoticons and cameras. The artist has developed a complex conceptual vernacular that deals with the intersection of secularity, urbanity and contemporaneity. Using humour, somewhat satirically, he reacts to an age increasingly defined by the digitisation of communication, where the upsurge of social media has lead to a widespread voyeurism. For Ettelson, the growing normality and banality of this modern scenario is strangely amusing, and he draws meaning from observing this in people’s day-to-day lives, “[my work] encompasses my amusement with the people, places and spaces that surround me.”
