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Tom Varley (b. 1985) is an artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Since 2020 Tom has concentrated exclusively on painting and drawing. Prior to this he worked with a range of media including film, video, text, and installation. His artworks have often explored the subjective character of individual experience and how this relates to wider systems and structures — language, ideology, and economy.

The Eccentricity of an Ellipse: Part One (2016)
HD Video, 9’38”

“Tom Varley’s recent work examines the limitations and possibilities of new communication technology and how it is changing the way in which individuals, governments and corporations interpret reality. I’m interested in the over-interpretation of data, in random correlations between phenomena mistaken for causal relationships, in spider-diagrams and conspiracy theories. (Artist’s Statement, March 2018). In the first part of a yet-to-be completed film trilogy titled The Eccentricity of an Ellipse, Varley focuses on the recent Rosetta mission initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA), which in late summer 2014 ventured into the orbit of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The Rosetta probe carried a smaller spacecraft called Philae, which was designed to be the first man-made object to land on the surface of a comet. The film opens with a simple linear shape that expands and contracts from a line to a circle and back. A series of black and white film clips follow: a close-up view of a washing machine, a cup of black coffee seen from above, footage of a fizzing pill being dropped into a glass of water reversed so that it appears to leap back into the grasp of a finger and thumb. Alongside these evocative images, a script narrated by Varley reflects on the marketing strategies that the ESA employed to communicate significant moments in the Rosetta mission. Twitter accounts were set up in the names of the two spacecraft in an attempt to make them appear more human-like and relatable. The space agency even created cartoon versions of them, with Philae as ‘a loveable child-like character with an “I ♥ Earth” sticker on its backpack.’ Varley imagines the existential dilemmas these characters might face after their mission has ended, the landed Philae probe abandoned and disintegrating on the hostile surface of the icy comet.” 

Emily Butler, Whitechapel Gallery , London Open 2018 (catalogue)