Scott Andrew Elliott is a Canadian artist and researcher whose work is grounded in a desire to connect people with their immediate surroundings by focusing in particular on utilitarian architecture and common building materials. Through building site-specific architectural interventions and installations, Elliott draws to the fore aspects of the relationship between body and architecture that usually play out in the background of experience. This shift in perception begins to reveal the systems of perception we use to negotiate our way through the world.
Elliott’s practice began with narrative installations that focused on domestic spaces, often transforming them into abstract or geometrical forms. Since 2013, his work has focused on extending existing architectural structures with non-functional aesthetic forms. These extensions continue the materials of the original, and by so doing weaken the lines of distinction between function and aesthetics in art and architecture. Affording encounters with built structures that cannot be easily categorized as architecture or art present an opportunity for the emergence of new configurations of body-architecture continua. Elliott’s practice seeks to extend the built environment’s agency and capacity to evoke change in the human individual.
Elliott’s artworks have been exhibited internationally, including the Robert Wilson Watermill Centre (USA), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Canada), the Museum of Finnish Architecture (Finland), the Kerava Art Museum (Finland), the Helsinki City Museum (Finland), and the RMIT Design Hub (Australia).
He holds a BFA from York University, an MA in environmental art from the University of Art and Design Helsinki (now part of Aalto University), and in 2017 he completed a PhD at RMIT University in Architecture and Design. His academic research has been published in the Journal of Artistic Research, RUUKKU, Journal of Somaesthetics, Idea Journal, as well as in edited books. Reviews and essays dedicated to his work have been included in Architectural Design, Taide, Helsingin Sanomat, and others.