(b. 1994, Birmingham, UK)
Derrelle Elijah is an artist exploring the grey areas of an oversaturated visual culture,
where information and visual excess constantly surround us and shape the rhythms of daily life.
His work investigates the in-between spaces where things get lost or quietly slip past us, focusing on the fragments, overlaps, and moments where things clash or quietly blend.
Through layered mark-making, experimental painting, and sculptural objects, he invites audiences into moments of pause through
the uncanny and disruption. His use of unconventional layering combinations comes from trying to understand his own thoughts, feelings, and memories — especially when they feel fuzzy or half-formed. Through hybrid processes, cultural identity is explored by combining elements that don’t normally meet, creating new spaces between them.
His sculptural objects often carry the trace of accumulation — layered marks, eroded edges, and surfaces that feel worn and reassembled. Physical forms that seem half-buried, half-discovered, recalling both the ancient and the personal. Whilst his paintings sometimes read like maps of memory: layered dense textures, as if scratched out by time. Cultural symbols and ancient motifs filter into his hybrid processes, re-emerging in shapes that blur the mechanical with the organic.
His reference points span early civilisations, family memory, and the textures of everyday life. These become anchors in work that sits between analogue and mechanical, clarity and distortion. Accessibility is central to his approach; he believes art should be open rather than closed off by hierarchy.
His mantra, “all work is the work; no matter which version you get, you’ve got it,” reflects this belief, in allowing variants of his works to exist for all audiences.
EDUCATION
Matthew Boulton College
Birmingham, UK
Chelsea College of the Arts
London, UK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
The new hues of blackness, Piccadilly Circus showcase London [UK]
Un/Sense, Christies 2022, London [UK]
Collectivist, Copeland Gallery 2022, London [UK]
Goodeye Projects 2025, London [UK]
The space that lies between, Twilight Contemporary 2025, London [UK]
Juvenile, Shipton Gallery 2025, London [UK]
Afterfact, Greatorex st gallery 2025, London [UK]
RESIDENCIES
Goodeye Projects 2024
London, UK
SPECIAL PROJECTS
Fred Perry x Derrelle Elijah
Re-imagined, Jorja Smith
Clarks x Jorja Smith
CREATIVE DIRECTION
Fred Perry x Derrelle Elijah
Falling or Flying, Jorja Smith
FEATURES / INTERVIEWS
The Face, Home is where the heart is
Christies, Un/sense
ENQUIRIES / COMMISSIONS / CATALOGUES
CONTACT
