Elliott Routledge returns to Saint Cloche for his second solo exhibition with the gallery, FANTASY FANTASY, a presentation examining fantasy not as escapism, but as a fractured and deeply human framework through which identity is continually constructed, softened, and reimagined.

Spanning abstract painting, sculpture, and functional plant vessels, the exhibition considers the imagined personas, symbols, and narratives people create to navigate contemporary life. Forms drift between humour and discomfort, optimism and fragility, resisting fixed interpretation. Surfaces carry interruptions, opposing materials, and traces of instability, suggesting fantasy as something unresolved rather than idealised.

Routledge’s practice moves fluidly between abstraction, figuration, and public intervention, exploring the relationship between the individual, the built environment, and collective experience. Drawing from street culture, architecture, and symbolic language, his compositions balance monumentality with intimacy, where gesture and material tension become vehicles for psychological and emotional reflection.

At the centre of the exhibition is an ongoing dialogue between permanence and impermanence. Sculptural vessels inhabited by living plants introduce cycles of growth, decay, and renewal into the gallery space, positioning beauty as temporary and continually shifting. These works extend beyond static objecthood, allowing time itself to become part of the composition.

Through FANTASY FANTASY, Routledge expands his exploration of abstraction and material presence, presenting fantasy as an unstable psychological terrain shaped by projection, contradiction, and desire.

Fantasy Fantasy

“As humans we constantly build narratives around ourselves to make sense of the world. Fantasy can be comforting, awkward, fragile, even absurd. I’m interested in that space where things begin to unravel a little, where humour, vulnerability and contradiction coexist.

The works aren’t trying to escape reality, they’re more about exposing the imperfect systems we create to move through it.”

Born in Tokyo and based in Sydney, Routledge is internationally recognised for large-scale murals, installations, and sculptural commissions across Australia, the United States, Cambodia, and France. Major projects include TI TREE WALK at Melbourne Quarter (2024), JOY IN NATURE in San Diego (2023), and the MOXY HOTEL exterior mural in Sydney (2022). In 2023, his installation Strange Oasis was acquired by Manly Art Gallery and Museum. His works are held in significant private collections internationally.