Eleanor Marriot and Tony Tooke Margate: Vi

Eleanor Marriott and Tony Tooke, Violet Hour, 2021 Digital photograph 29,7 x 42 cm

Eleanor Marriott and Tony Tooke are an artist duo that collaborated on Nothing with Nothing and Violet Hour. Both images were inspired by Margate Sands, a beachside town where T.S. Elliot wrote The Wasteland. Nothing with Nothing is an image of the bench next to the shelter where Eliot wrote during his stay. Marriott captured the photograph and Tooke etched (digitally) into the bench a direct reference from The Wasteland: ‘On Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing’.

“Margate is famous for its spectacular sunsets, but generally people point their cameras towards the sea in order to capture them” (Marriott). Marriott instead photographed the Turner Contemporary gallery, set against a violet sky, hence the title. “Tony took key colours from the photograph and placed them alongside the image, making them resemble a paint palette chart. The tones gently change in reflection of the changing tones within the image itself. The end result of the clean lines of within the image alongside the matching colours is a sense of order and harmony. The work is again a nod to T.S.Eliot, who in The Wasteland writes: ‘At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives’. It’s also a tribute to the Turner Contemporary gallery, featured in the image” (Marriott).