Across an interdisciplinary practice, Elliott Mickleburgh's work aspires to speak something to the tensions between givenness and hiddenness, revelation and occlusion, and immanence and transcendence, for it is these contested terms that most vibrantly color existence in the twilight of the century. In a world driven by constant exposure to images and the media systems that write, store, and distribute this information, it is all too easy to become convinced that there is nothing around us, no thought or object, that cannot be sensibly expressed through the machinations of technology and visual culture. As counterpoint to this, Mickleburgh's practice as an artist and writer is invested in producing that which leavens the enlightened hyper-visibility of contemporary life with more mercurial ways of thinking and perceiving: aporia, faith, ascesis, ecstasy.

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Started in 2019, Mickleburgh's most recent project XX.XX.XX is a reflection on the biblical Annunciation that is executed through the eclectic materials that emerge during the production and representation of luxury commodities such as clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics. In making advertisements and the products they describe, documents and things such as mood boards, screen tests, and the very sets used for photography and videography all come to indicate a condition of labor and ingenuity that takes place before and during the making of something, a state during which creativity has yet to zero in on a point on the teleological horizon. The Annunciation carries a similar impression of the prototypical: canonized in the Gospel according to Luke, this narrative describes the pomp and ceremony around the archangel Gabriel descending from the heavens to inform Mary that she will eventually become the Mother of God on Earth. Like the earliest production stages of creating luxury goods and their fetishized images, the Annunciation is an internal communication stating that more communication has yet to come, a message declaring that there will be more messages, a promise that something extraordinary will happen... but not quite yet.