Bombed, burned, bulldozed, flooded, or closed due to rent disputes, neglect, or the inevitable passage of time, these sites are all lost to us now. Ellen Harvey’s paintings capture places we can never return to, from Grenfell Tower in London, to an olive grove in Palestine, to a backyard in New Jersey. Her series, The Disappointed Tourist helps to heal and repair a tear in our collective nostalgia: Ellen Harvey is living in the memories of strangers around the world, and these sites live on in her work. We are grateful to share a small portion of this thoughtful and moving project.

“We live in a world that often feels as though it is vanishing before our eyes. Places we love disappear. Places we have hoped to visit cease to exist. The forces of war, time, ideology, greed and natural disaster are constantly remaking places that we love but cannot control or save. The Disappointed Tourist is inspired by the urge to repair what has been broken. It makes symbolic restitution, literally remaking lost sites, at the same time that it acknowledges the inadequacy of such restitution. It is inspired both by old postcards and by the tradition of tourist painting – both the paintings produced for wealthy tourists to take home and the touring paintings that allowed pre-photographic viewers to experience far-off places. It attempts to honor the trauma underlying the nostalgia that results from our collective and individual losses, while celebrating the human attachment to places both real and aspirational. It tries to create a level playing field in which personal losses and larger cultural losses can meet and be recognized and create a new conversation about our love for our physical environment, harnessing nostalgia to create empathy rather than division.”

Ellen Harvey, 2021

The Disappointed Tourist is an ongoing project for which Ellen Harvey is making paintings of places nominated by members of the public in response to the question: “Is there some place that you would like to visit or revisit that no longer exists?” She has painted over 300 sites so far.  Anyone can submit a site to be painted, although she does not guarantee that she will paint each site. All paintings are 24 x 18” (61 x 46 cm) and are painted in monochrome acrylic with oil glazes on wood panels and include the name of the site and the date of the site’s destruction.

This is just a small selection from the collection. To read the beautiful stories behind each image click on the image and then click on the “i” beneath it. To see all the images and all the stories visit the Disappointed Tourist site.

Ellen Harvey is a British-born Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose work ranges from guerrilla street interventions to immersive institutional installations to large-scale public artworks. Her work is painting-based but utilizes a wide variety of media and participatory strategies to explore a variety of reoccurring themes such as the social and ecological implications of the picturesque, the revolutionary potential of ornament, the potential detoxification of nostalgia and the role of art and the artist in our society.

Her current project The Disappointed Tourist, for which she has been painting lost sites suggested by members of the public, has formed the centerpiece of a traveling retrospective. After its initial outing at The Suburban (Milwaukee, 2019), this project has traveled as the centerpiece of Harvey’s European retrospective to Butler Gallery (Ireland, 2023), Laznia Contemporary Arts Center (Poland, 2023), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Austria, 2021), and Turner Contemporary (UK, 2021). A catalog for the retrospective, was produced by MdM Salzburg. 

The exhibition at Turner Contemporary was selected by Frieze as one of the five best institutional shows in the UK in 2021. 

See the full project and read all the stories at the Disappointed Tourist. Submit a site to be painted here. See more of Ellen Harvey’s work on her website.

DISCLAIMER

“It is the nature of this project to be incomplete and totally dependent on submissions received. If you feel some place is missing, please submit it. This project is open to all and is constantly evolving.

The paintings were inspired by a wide variety of sources, including images that were provided to me without attribution. Wherever possible, I have tried to use open source materials. Where copyrighted photographs were used, I have tried to inform copyright holders and provide credit.

I am in no way an authority on any of these sites. Information was sourced from participants or whatever I could find on the internet, primarily Wikipedia, so I can’t vouch for accuracy. Dates on the paintings are of when the site ceased to exist in some manner. If you find a mistake, please let me know.” – Ellen Harvey