Life Raft

Research Content: Life Raft continues Harrison’s work investigating, exposing and challenging the absurd consequences of our capitalist system – particularly climate change – and exploring the impact free-market forces are having on our society and our individual day-to-day lives. Designed as the final ‘hole’ in the artist Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf course, Life Raft – a scale map of the UK floating in the adjacent canal – offers a safe haven to immigrant golf balls that can make the treacherous crossing. In a typically playful way, Harrison’s work hints towards a somewhat darker time in the future, when the continued rise in global temperatures creates a vast number of ‘climate refugees’ desperate to escape to more temperate climes. Life Raft takes inspiration from floating weather map used on ITV’s This Morning in the ’80s and ’90s, via artist John O’Shea who Harrison collaborated with on The Other Forecast (2013).


Research Context: Life Raft was commissioned by EM15 as part of Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf: a nine-hole, miniature golf course designed by different artists, as one of the Collateral Events at the 56th La Biennale di Venezia in 2015. Life Raft was featured on BBC News at Six and Harrison was selected as one of Dazed Digital’s “top ten artists at the Venice Biennale”. Life Raft has continued to tour with Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf to various UK venues in 2016 and 2017.

Galleries/Venues & Dates• 9 May - 26 July 2015, Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, La Biennale di Venezia (Italy) • 2 April 2016 - 19 June 2016 Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, New Art Exchange, Nottingham • 2 July - 4 September 2016 Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, QUAD, Derby • 2 June - 3 September 2017, Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, York Art Gallery • 29 September - 1 October 2017, Rising, Art Licks Weekend, London • 20 April - 7 May 2018, Sculpture Showroom, Glasgow International

No. of exhibits: 1 golf hole (from a series of 9 designed by different artists) 

Scale of project or dimensions of exhibits: France: 120 x 128cm / UK: 308 x 175cm 

Co-exhibitors: • John Akomfrah, Doug Fishbone, Eyal Wiezman, Yinka Shonibare & Hetain Patel 

Associated Catalogue/Publication with ISBN where applicable: www.ellieharrison.com/liferaf